Book Review: Tricks of Fortune by Lina Churn
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (3.5 stars)

If you loved the humor, hijinks, and tarot-flavored mystery of Play the Fool, you'll find plenty to enjoy in Tricks of Fortune. Book two in Lina Churn’s quirky cozy mystery series brings back our favorite reluctant amateur sleuth, Katie True, and once again throws her into the middle of a small-town whodunit—with a deck of tarot cards and a lot of heart.

Just like book one, I really enjoyed the blend of laugh-out-loud moments and mystical vibes. Katie's habit of interpreting people and situations through tarot cards is such a fun and unique character trait, and it continues to give the series its signature flavor. Katie herself is a delight—quirky, scrappy, and endearingly imperfect. She doesn’t always have it together, and that’s exactly what makes her so charming.

That said, some of the storytelling choices didn’t land quite as well for me this time around. The flashbacks with Gina’s aunt explaining tarot card meanings would have made so much more sense in the first book; here, they felt oddly placed and a bit clunky. The new layer of Katie’s backstory—particularly the sudden revelation about her being “famous” for a childhood rescue—came out of nowhere and didn’t quite align with how her character was treated in book one. It made her journey feel a little uneven.

I also struggled a bit with the setting and logistics. The overlap of towns, jurisdictions, and Jamie’s role felt muddled, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how everything (and everyone) connected. It didn’t ruin the story, but it did make me pause and backtrack a few times.

As for the mystery itself, I figured it out early, which took away a bit of the suspense. The big reveal didn’t surprise me, and while watching the threads unravel was still satisfying, the final legal consequences for the villain didn’t feel realistic, especially for such a serious crime. That ending pulled me out of the story a bit.

All in all, Tricks of Fortune is a solid follow-up that keeps the spirit of the series alive—funny, heartfelt, and just a little bit magical—but some of its pacing, plotting, and character reveals kept it from reaching the heights it could have. I’m still rooting for Katie True though, and I’ll absolutely be picking up the next book to see what trouble she stumbles into next!

4/5 stars
Tricks of Fortune, the second book in Lina Chern’s Play the Fool series, delivers another smart, twisty mystery with just the right amount of sarcasm, suspense, and small-town secrets.

This time, Katie True—our tarot-reading, delightfully snarky amateur sleuth—finds herself wrapped up in a murder investigation when her childhood savior, Lt. Matthew Peterson, is killed and her friend Gina becomes the prime suspect. Katie teams up with Jaime once again to get to the bottom of things.

The mystery is layered and well-paced, with plenty of red herrings and clever twists that kept me guessing. I also appreciated getting a deeper look into Katie’s past and how she got into tarot, which adds a fun and unique touch to the story.

While I slightly preferred the first book, this one still held up as a strong follow-up—and could easily be enjoyed as a standalone. If you like your mysteries with a quirky lead, witty dialogue, and just a touch of romance and heart, Tricks of Fortune is a solid pick.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Bantam for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

From the publisher: Tarot card reader extraordinaire Katie True gets embroiled in another local murder when her best friend becomes the prime suspect.

Tricks of Fortune is a quirky cozy mystery set in the Chicago suburbs. Although it is the second book in the series, I think you could easily read it first without feeling too lost.

Katie True is somewhere on the neurodivergent scale, and I think anyone who feels they look at the world in a different way than most people could relate to her. She has an autistic brother who is making his own way, and a successful sister she scrapes along with. The first murder victim is the police officer who rescued Katie from a car accident when she was a baby long ago. The officer goes on to become a local hero. People often say to Katie, “You’re the baby,” as a photo of the rescue is well known in the community. She struggles with a self-imposed expectation to make something of her life after the dramatic rescue gave her a second chance.

I’m not into tarot cards, but throughout Tricks of Fortune we flash back to Katie’s Aunt Rose going through the deck of cards with her. I found this very helpful since Katie uses the cards to help her understand people and situations. There’s no magic involved, just psychology.

I guessed the Big Reveal almost from the very beginning, but that did not alter my enjoyment of the book. There’s a slow burn romance to watch in addition to the unraveling of what happened with the first murder. At one point after she’s been in a car accident the commander in charge of the investigation brutally interrogates Katie, which I found pretty unbelievable (she was not a suspect), but fortunately there was not too much of that.

The book isn’t laugh out loud funny but the author has a way with words that often made me smile. “Jessie narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re not helping Jaimie investigate this, are you?’ She said INVESTIGATE the way I once heard a shaggy street preacher say FORNICATE.” (ch. 14 of the advance reader copy)

I read an advance reader copy of Tricks of Fortune from Netgalley. It is scheduled to be released on July 1 and will be available at the Galesburg Public Library. The first book, Play the Fool, can be found in the adult fiction collection at the library under the author’s last name, Chern. I am looking forward to book three.

I didn’t realize that this book was the second book in a series. Luckily you don’t necessarily have to read the first book in order to enjoy this one. However, pacing in this book is exceedingly slow. I did enjoy the tarot card readings intermingled with the mystery and there are a lot of things that are discovered throughout this book that show very well that people can have a side to them we don’t always know. A person can be two things at a time. And those two things are not always pretty.
Thank you to Random House Publishing and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this title.

I read this book because NetGalley asked me to. I enjoyed reading it, so I’m glad I had the opportunity. This is the second book in a series, and I did not read the first book. I didn’t feel lost or confused by not reading the first one, but I felt I missed a lot of character development. It felt sort of like being the newcomer to an established group.

This is a murder mystery. Katie True, a tarot card reader, is the main character and tries to assist in solving the murder of a cop who saved her life when she was a baby and is a town favorite.

This was a pleasant read but a little slow-paced for a murder mystery. Having lived in a Chicago suburb, I did like the Chicagoland references in the book.

This second outing for Tarot Card reader Katie True finds her working to clear her friend Gina Dio, who happens to be an ex-cop, of murder. The cards foretold that a secret from Gina's past would hurt her. It has been a year since Katie has been in business as a professional reader working out of one of her sister's real estate offices and they are celebrating. No sooner does Katie read the card than Gina is arrested for the murder of Lt. Matthew Peterson (Officer Pete, as many in the community refer to him). Katie and Officer Pete have history, he rescued her from a car accident when she was a baby. Katie knows that Gina is innocent and decides to prove it.

As Katie investigates she learns that Officer Pete was not the sterling person she thought he was. He cheated on his wife, drank alot and stole money. When another officer is killed the police want to blame Gina for this one also. Are the deaths connected?

The story is told in two time periods, present and when Katie was a child learning about the Tarot cards from her Aunt Rosie. Lina Chern intertwines the cards with the suspects that Katie interviews to seek out clues. There are secrets revealed, red herrings thrown at us, twists and turns to keep us engaged. Although this is the second book in the series, it can be read as a stand-alone. I would recommend reading Play the Fool, the first book as it provides the background and introduces us to the major characters. I look forward to more Katie True and her Tarot cards!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Ballantine Bantam Dell | Random House Group, for an ARC. The opinions in the review are my own.

An interesting story of Katie True as she navigates adulthood that seems at odds with her family and friends. Katie wants to be able to help people through her reading of tarot cards. As she has an inate skill of interpreting the skills for the person in question, it seems that this profession is frowned upon by her family.

The story is a continuation for the main characters involved. Very little explanation is provided about who some characters are and why they behave the way they do. Apparently Katie has solved a crime in the past and used those same skills in this story to help her friend.

While taking place in some very small towns in Illinois, the author takes you through a colorful group of characters that leaves the reader wondering who did it. Being a tarot reader in such small communities seems a little farfetched, Katie is an entertaining investigator that finds the culprit at the end.

A very entertaining and easy read. It was perfect for a vacation book.

This was a great read as it has quirky characters, tangled loyalties, and just enough grit to balance the humour throughout.

This book follows Chern’s Edgar winner, Play the Fool, which introduced Tarot card reader Katie True. While I haven’t read the first book, this one still did an excellent job of weaving Katie’s origin story into the plot. As the book opens, Katie, who runs a tarot reading business out of her sister’s real estate office, is stunned when her friend Gina is arrested for the murder of local hero cop, Matthew Peterson, better known in town as “Officer Pete.” Not only is Katie rocked by Gina’s arrest, she’s rocked by the death of Officer Pete, who famously rescued baby Katie True from a car wreck and saved her life.

As she grew, Officer Pete had checked in with her, telling her she had been saved for something extraordinary. While Pete may have meant well, Katie feels not only is this far from true, but she’s pretty much failed at everything: college, jobs, relationships. Her little tarot reading place in her sister’s office is the only thing that feels right to her. Otherwise, she lives in a crappy and noisy apartment and drives a crappy car.

What she has going for her are friends – Gina, for one, but there’s also Jamie, a cop, and Matt, Officer Pete’s son who has reappeared after this tragedy and is reconnecting with Katie. And there’s also her odd, genius brother Owen who sometimes appears in her apartment. He’s a professor and sometimes crashes with Katie to get some work done. This oddly assembled group (except perhaps Owen) are all trying to find out who killed Officer Pete. The only thing Katie is certain of: it wasn’t Gina.

Weaved through the story are vignettes of Katie and her slightly disreputable aunt Rosie, who taught her cards when she was eight. Each card Rosie turns over for the young Katie then ties to the chapter in the present, which is a neat structural trick, as well as giving the reader an insight into why Katie finds tarot a refuge in a busy and chaotic world. The way the cards are explained in this book, the way Katie reads them, make so much sense I became a convert.

I also became a convert to Chern’s prose and her sometimes nuttily resonant turns of phrase. She so captures the chaos of being a young person in the world trying to figure out where you might best belong, something that’s not limited to finding the perfect job, as Katie also seems pretty clueless in the romance department.

This book is also an excellent look at the public persona of someone – in this case, Officer Pete – who visited schools, sponsored a children’s group, and was a great dad, whose son, Matt, has grown up in his image and become a cop. And then there’s the underside of Officer Pete, which of course is a major part of the book. The public part of the man was so accepted and so circulated that the underside is hard or impossible for people to grasp.

Katie, through sheer determination and a belief in her cards (she carries them with her everywhere) does manage to get to the bottom of Pete’s murder. This book for sure isn’t a cozy but it’s not quite a noir either. It’s certainly a thoughtful and original read. I enjoyed Katie True and look forward to reading more about her.

Katie True is such a delightful character — I was so happy to find out that she’s back in “Tricks of Fortune” by Lina Chern after making her amusing debut in “Play the Fool.” This book is again witty, charming, clever and dosed with a lot of sardonic humor. It definitely can be read as a standalone, but you’ll be enticed to go back and read the first book.

Our current Katie is still in northern Illinois, in the far-reaching suburbs of Chicago that get close to the Wisconsin border and feature towns that all have local lakes. She’s currently set up as “Out of the Blue Consultations” in one of her sister’s satellite real estate offices. Her guy friend is Officer Jamie, her quirky brother is Owen, and her unusual ex-cop friend is Gina. Katie does want more out of her tarot readings, she doesn’t want to be “dressing up like Madame von Freakshow so I can tell some drunk VP of sales if he’ll score at the hotel bar that night is not what I had in mind. I want to solve a real problem for someone.”

As an infant, Katie was spectacularly rescued from a car crash by local legend Officer Pete, and nearly thirty years later, Officer Pete is found murdered, Jamie is assigned as a task force investigator, and Gina is a suspect. Of course Katie will get involved.

Her unique investigation technique is to keep the reading cards of the people who knew Pete (it’s her clever way of getting suspects to give up information) but it’s her perception and intelligence that sees clues and assembles the missing parts of the mystery. She still sees people as cards: Officer Pete is the Knight of Swords

We do get more background on how 8 year old Katie learned to read tarot cards from her wacky Aunt Rosie, and this is an evenly paced mystery with well-developed characters. I just loved it! 5 stars!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO No eye colors except for some flat blue ones.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO And Matt is spot on about lotuses only blooming in August.
Thank you to Bantam and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

+ I read book one of this series, Play the Fool and really enjoyed it. So I picked up the sequel and tarot reading, Katie True is back and now she’s navigating life being known as the girl from the accident and trying to help solve a murder of the cop from that accident.

+ In the first book Katie was kind of lost in life and an under achiever and I liked seeing her growth. Now Katie is more settled in this sequel and she’s dating Jaime, who’s a detective. This one is definitely more cozy than the first book.

~ If you love cozy mysteries, you will enjoy this book but for me, I missed the action, twists and turns that I loved in book one.

~ This one moved to slow for me and it left me uninvested in the story.

Final Thoughts:

I enjoyed book one more than this one because Katie’s character had room to grow. I feel like this one moved too slowly for me and I didn’t connect to the characters. If you like cozy mysteries, definitely give this series a try.

This was a fun mystery read! I did not read the first book in the series prior to this one, but I didn’t feel like I had any issues following the story. I definitely plan on going back and reading the first in the series because I did like this book. The mystery aspect of this book was really good and I also liked that humor was sprinkled into the book as well.

3.5 rounded to 4

I wish I had known this would be a sequel.

Having read tarot for many decades, I was interested in the POV on the cards. Perhaps a little too much unexplained woo, juxtaposing the mystery with the cards. I found myself faltering; finally I wished the mystery would go away, in favor of deeper reach into character, but I'm not much one for murder mysteries. Your mileage may vary.

I didn’t realize this was a sequel when I requested it. I have done this a few times so I’m unsure if I just miss it or if netgalley doesn’t always list it

When a police officer who saved Katie’s life as a child is murdered, she feels the need to help bring his killer to justice. With the use of her beloved deck, she reads the cards and follows the clues. Can she sell the case before either one of her nearest and dearest is charged or the death card comes calling for her?

This is the second book in the series and it was well worth the wait. I love Katie and her use of tarot cards throughout the story. The author has done a great job of weaving in the deck along with a mystery that keeps you guessing, turning and going down rabbit holes until the final reveal.

I loved it! I'm definitely going to spread the word about this great series in some groups I belong to. The dialogue is smart and engaging and the mystery caught me off guard but makes complete sense. I especially enjoyed the tarot teaching moments with her aunt - I'd really like to meet her. Excellent writer!

Although this is the second book in a series, it is the first one that I have read. It was easy to read this as a standalone as I did not feel that there were enough references to the first book to hinder the story.
It was a fun read. A cozy mystery where a tarot card reading girl attempts to help solve a murder. A murder that her friend has been accused of. A different twist on crime solving but none the less it was an interesting read.
It was a quick, easy read and I would recommend it for an afternoon of binge reading.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book

Second in a series for me. This marks an exception to my usually liking subsequent books in a series more than the opener.
This story expounds on the story from book one of Katie being saved as a baby from a car crash by a beloved local policeman known as Officer Pete. Now Officer Pete has shockingly been murdered and Katie wants to work with her “romantic interest?” to help solve the case. In the process she learns more about Officer Pete than she ever wanted to.
I must say the story held my interest and I definitely was invested in learning WhoDunIt.
The unfolding was implausible to me and a bit dramatic without much logic or grounding. It felt a bit Keystone Cop like.
I was hoping for more about Katie’s tarot reading skills and the book delivered that with flashbacks to her Aunt Rosie who taught tarot reading to Katie. While it was interesting I had trouble relating its points to where I was in the story. I just did not get how they helped her solve the murder or in fact the rationale behind card reading.
I did find the relationship between Katie and Jaime to be interesting as well as learning more about how Katie views the world and her place in it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/ Ballantine for the ARC to review. All opinions my own. Expected publication July 1.

Katie True doesn't want to believe her best friend killed America's Boy Scout, but it sure does look like it.

Lina Chern brings Katie and her Tarot cards back for a second mystery in Tricks of Fortune. Recalling how her aunt taught her the deck, Katie deals a hand for every suspect. Her aunt isn't the only freaky character in the book.

There's the dead Scout's wife and son. There's the top officer in the police department. There's Katie's brilliant brother and over-achiever sister. And of course there's the best friend.

Chern 's scenes pop into the reader's brain like scenes from the movie Fantasia. This book is a trip.

Tarot Card Reader Katie True teams up with cop Jamie Roth to help solve the murder of a fellow police officer. When her best friend is accused of his murder she must use her tarot reading skills to help solve the crime. The secrets she uncovers will threaten not only her life but the lives of those she loves.

This is a cute, cozy mystery with lots of humor throughout. I enjoyed reading the main character interactions with the locals and it was interesting how her tarot card skills were woven into the story. This was a quick, easy read with an interesting twist on how to solve a crime. Although this is the second book in the series, you do not need to read the first one to follow the story.


Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Bantam for the ARC!