A young man dies after a strange confrontation with Rose, one of Salem's odd duck residents. Once again, Rose finds herself in the middle of a police investigation into a suspicious death. The first time, 25 years ago, was a more dramatic triple murder of young women who were dubbed "The Goddesses." The only witness to The Goddess murders was 5-year-old Callie, daughter of one of the victims. After the tragedy, Rose took Callie in and rasied her, so now Callie returns to Salem to help police chief Rafferty clear Rose's name -- and to figure out what really happened on that night 25 years ago.

This is called a sequel to The Lace Reader, Barry's first novel, published more than ten years ago. I loved The Lace Reader and couldn't wait to read this follow-up, and I'm glad I did. Although it's been so long since I read the first book, I didn't feel like that detracted from the reading of this book. Some of the characters from the first book are involved in this story, but enough of their backstory is included here that it really isn't necessary to read The Lace Reader first.

The characters and setting of this book are fantastic and, in my mind, realistic, and it was interesting to learn more about Salem, Massachusetts and its year-round residents. But what really sold me on this book was the writing itself, the way the story unfolded in bits and pieces. Clues are given along the way, and maybe those with minds that think logically could have figured things out, but I was kept guessing almost to the end of the story. I'm thrilled to see that there will be another book in this series. I only hope that we won't have to wait another ten years to read it!

The Fifth Petal is an interesting read about murders which took place many years ago. The author focuses on the daughter of one of the women killed...her memories, her relationships both past and present, and her skills as a music therapist who uses singing bowls to heal. Another main character is a woman who has devoted her life to researching and telling the stories of the witches of Salem. She is a suspect in the murders. The author provides solid background information about the history of Salem and witchcraft so that the reader can better understand how this story evolves. However, I still needed to let go of a grasp on reality to thoroughly enjoy the book. The characters and their relationships with each other kept me intrigued throughout.

This is a prepub, so I shouldn't judge it too harshly based on typos, grammar -- things like that, according to Netgalley. However, there are two particular points from this book that I could not suspend my belief enough to get past to enjoy the story -- one a major point, the other a slightly less important one.

1. The author has "[tried] to keep things as real as possible when it comes to Salem and vicinity," and does leave a kind of apology/excuse in her author's notes for anything that could be wrong, but my peeve cannot be overlooked.

This book takes place in modern day Salem, Mass. Her story is about a group of women who in 1989, and in 2014, tried to consecrate the place where the accused witches where executed in 1692, at Gallows Hill, she writes. Barry even writes in her end notes "A special thank you to the members of Gallows Hill Project who have finally proven, once and for all, the real location of the 1692 hangings." While she does not confirm here in the notes that location, the assumption can be made that it is where she writes in the book, in Salem.

I am a librarian, and have done my genealogy research. I am a direct descendant of Mary Towne Estey, a woman who was accused of witchcraft and hung in Salem in 1692. Doing my research, I know that following the witch hysteria, the town of Salem changed its name to Danvers (http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/Danvers.html). Today's Salem is not where the trials happened, let alone where people were hung. Barry has a particular character in this book who is an historian, acclaimed by the Smithsonian. I read the entire book, hoping at some point someone might mention that they were looking in the wrong place, that Danvers was the true location. It never happened.

Anyone not familiar with the history of Salem and Danvers would probably enjoy this book, but I could not get over this glaring omission in a book where the characters are meant to be authorities and the author took great pains to "keep things real."

2. My second problem with this book is very different from the first. One of the main characters has very dark hair and decides to color it to disguise herself. In chapter ten: "The color on the L'Oreal box was a very light blond. "Is it even going to take?" She gestured to her dark curls.

The real answer is no, it wouldn't take. It would, at most, turn the character's hair an orange color, but more likely that not, it wouldn't change the hair at all. Box hair color, like L'Oreal, doesn't have any developer, or lift. It's color depositing only. In order to make dark hair blond, like what happens in the book, you would need to bleach the color out completely, then tone the hair, and then deposit blond color. Again, not something other readers might even pick up on, but I did, and it bothered me.

Brunonia Barry is an author I fell in love with through a past book club. When I first picked up The Lace Reader, I wasn't sure why a club member had chosen it. It didn't seem like anything special, but it was. It was the first book I read with an unreliable narrator and it blew my mind. I went on to re-read it multiple times, and that's not something I normally do. When I saw Barry was releasing a new book, I was excited. When I realized it was a second book in The Lace Reader world I was ecstatic. I was hoping to find the mystery of The Fifth Petal to be just as engrossing as the original novel.

The Fifth Petal wove past and present to create a brilliant mystery. Young Callie Cahill witnesses the brutal murders of her mother and her friends that is never solved. Years later, when a new death becomes linked to the past murders, she returns to Salem to help Police Chief John Rafferty search for the truth about the night her mother was killed.

I was drawn into The Fifth Petal during the Prologue. The mystery began immediately and I wanted to know the answers to all of the questions the characters had just as much as they did. I loved the way Brunonia Barry wove this tale and kept me guessing almost up until the end. She also did an amazing job creating imagery and describing the Salem area. I could picture the entire story vividly in my head.

Callie's point of view was especially interesting to me. Her lack of memory from that original night and her special "powers" made for an unusual combination. The deeper the story got, the more Callie would remember. The more Callie remembered, the more exciting the story became. I loved the way she pieced everything together.

Rafferty's police perspective on the mystery added a critical element to the story. It took the supernatural aspect of the story and gave it much-needed grounding in reality. I also loved watching him piece together the answers while wading through the past and present cases. I hate admitting this, but I wasn't as keen on the way his past with Towner was used. I loved seeing them involved in the story, but at times it just felt like extra added stuff. That may be because it's been a few years since I've read The Lace Reader, and my memory of their relationship isn't as strong as when I first read it. I wasn't as drawn to their relationship as I was to what Callie was going through.

While I truly enjoyed reading The Fifth Petal, I did find it to be a little bit long. I was invested in the story the entire time, but there were parts that felt dragged out. The story probably could have wrapped up a little quicker. I had already correctly guessed some of the answers to the mystery at about 75% in. I was just waiting for it all to be presented to me.

Overall, The Fifth Petal was a great mystery to unravel. It's one fans of The Lace Reader will love and new readers will also enjoy.

I rate this a 3.5 stars. I liked the story line and characters but once in a while the story would drag and then all of a sudden I couldn't put it down. This story is about witches that are descendants from the witches of Salem that were killed back in the 1600's. 3 witches were killed in 1989 and no one knew who killed them. One of them had a daughter who had seen it all but she doesn't remember much of that night. Now it is 2014 and another murder took place, The town is still blaming Rose, who was like a mother to the women killed in 1989. 2 families that had been at war for many generations seem to be in the middle of all of this. I received this from NetGalley for review.

Wonderful story! Looking forward to reading more by this author!

First off, my thanks to NetGalley for an advance reading copy of The Fifth Petal. I remember reading The Lace Reader many years ago and wanted to give this new novel by Ms. Barry a try.

In 1989, on Halloween night in Salem, Massachusetts, three young women were brutally murdered while trying to honor their ancestors who were hanged in the Salem Witch Trials. The women were known as the goddesses and carried a dark secret. The child of one of the women, Callie survived, along with the goddesses's mentor and local historian, Rose.

The murders remained unsolved and the case cold, until another suspicious death on Halloween night, in the town of Salem, happens some thirty years later. Enter John Rafferty, the police chief, who is now married to Towner, a gifted lace reader. Callie, now a grown woman and a music healer, returns to Salem to help uncover the truth.

I enjoyed the parts about Salem and the witch trials. From a historical perspective, I found there was a lot to gain from this book. I felt there were many holes in the plot of the story though. I found myself backtracking a few pages too many times to pick up the current story thread. That is never a good thing. The characters didn't make me want to care about them. For example, Callie and her love affair were flat and unemotional, sparking no romantic engagement from me.

If you're a fan of Salem, or like witches and mystery, then I think you will find a lot to like in The Fifth Petal. I want to be fully invested with the characters in the books I read, and even though I learned about a piece of history, I just didn't get there with the rest of the story.

Although I received a copy of this eb00k from the publisher via netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This book took me awhile to get through, but it was totally worth it. Overall I thought this was amazing. I didn't realize until two minutes after reading this book that it is the second in a series. As you may have noticed in my other reviews, one of my pet peeves is when a book in a series cannot stand alone. This one did an amazing job standing alone. I might have to read the first book, just to see what this one's foundation looks like.

The story-line moved at a fair pace at first but gets faster as you go. The last third of the book went by SO quickly for me. I literally couldn't put it down.

The character development in this book was great for me. I could see them grow and evolve as their circumstances changed.

I loved the mystery in this book. Needing to know what happened to the goddesses was something that kept me reading. There are other smaller stories within that were an added bonus. This book left me satisfied with the way it ended. It wasn't so far left that you didn't believe it, but it wasn't so easy to guess that I knew who the killer was. Just a great mystery with so much more added in.

I previously read The Lace Reader and I have to say I loved it. I was super excited to see that this author wrote a second book to continue the story. The subject of the Salem witch trials has always fascinated me and I love reading anything related to that topic and that time period. These stories take place in modern times but the people and events of the present are affected by the people and events of the past.

The discovery of a dead body may be related to another set of deaths. As the chief of police tries to get to the bottom of the current case, he goes back and digs through the cold case of the 1989 murders. The surviving little girl from that case has come back to town to find the loved one that she thought was dead.

The Fifth Petal is an intriguing story of murder and mystery, as well as being full of wonderful characters. The author does a great job of making the people in the story believable and interesting. I was totally absorbed in this story and hope that the author has more to come.

A teenage boy named Billy Barnes dies on Halloween night; everyone knows that he was trouble, and no one is too surprised to see him come to a bad end. But police chief John Rafferty has a job to do, and he sets out to discover who the killer is. The setting is Salem, Massachusetts, the location of the Salem Witch Trials centuries ago and now the Mecca of Wiccans and others that practice witchcraft of various types, not to mention throngs of tourists that show up every autumn. Chief Rafferty wonders what the connection is between this murder and those of 25 years earlier, dubbed “The Goddess Murders”.

Thanks go to Net Galley and Crown for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for an honest review. This book will be available to the public January 24, 2017.

Barry is an experienced novelist, but her work is new to me. This title can be read as a stand-alone novel, but there’s a tremendous amount of detail here. Perhaps having read The Lace Reader, an earlier novel that other reviewers tell us has some of the same characters that are present here, would make this book less complicated and easier to sort through; then again, if Barry had chosen fewer secondary threads to follow, the reader could relax more and enjoy the book anyway. More on that in a minute.

Rose Whelan is a Salem native, has shouldered the “unofficial blame” for the Goddess Murders; she maintains that a banshee took up residence in her body and left her with no choice. Rose has gone from the psych ward, to homelessness, and back again; Rafferty and his wife Towner have offered her a room indoors, but she won’t leave the tree outside their home for long at a time, lest bad things happen. She has bad memories, and they give her unquiet dreams:

“On that horrible night, after it happened, after the shrieking stopped, the world had quieted and then disappeared. Rose had found herself staring into an eternal emptiness that stretched in every direction and went on forever. When the keening began, Rose had believed that the sound was coming from her own lips. Then she’d seen the tree limbs and branches start to move with the breath of the sound itself, their last leaves burning in the black sky like crackling paper. Then the trees had begun to speak. Come away now, the trees had said. Come away.”

The imagery here is amazing, as you can see; this aspect is the story’s greatest strength.

Our protagonist is Callie, who’s new in town. Rose had been her surrogate mother after her mother, one of the Goddesses, died. She had lost contact with her and is stunned to find her in such bad shape. And here, Brunonia does a fine job of highlighting the challenges of helping the homeless, not to mention the stereotypes that follow them. There’s a lot of Celtic lore that I also really like reading about.

The parts that disturb me are those throughout the book that reinforce the stereotype of women as being constantly in competition with one another, unable to get along and help each other.

However, the main thing that gets in the way of this being a really great read is the vast amount of detail about way too many things. At the 60 percent mark, my notes indicate that I wish the author would decide what, other than the primary plot line of the whodunit, she wants to feature. We have witches past; witches of the present; mean nuns; and way more about the healing properties of quartz bowls than I ever want to hear about. At this point in the book I am ready to throw in the towel and call it a 2 star read; I felt as if the mystery had degenerated into a New Age infomercial. I note that I can scarcely recall who’s dead, and who’s accused. But it’s a DRC and I have an obligation, so I forge on.

And that diagram! The diagram of a five-petal flower is created, changed and discussed in such infinite, numbing detail that my eyes are half-crossed by the time we make our way to the climax. Once we’re there, though, the story becomes more cohesive and I like the way she resolves it.

Those that have read Barry’s other books and liked them will enjoy this one; likewise those that are drawn to various aspects of modern spiritual healing and Wiccan practices will also be pleased. For myself, I would enjoy her work more if she didn’t try to jam such an extensive collection of minutiae into a single novel.

Although I haven't read The Lace Reader, I had absolutely no problem getting into this book and will definitely make sure I read The Lace Reader now! This book interested me because I have always been fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials and the history of it all. The Fifth Petal is a story that relates the Witch Trials, modern day Salem and a triple homicide that occurred in 1989 dubbed "The Goddess Murders". The two survivors from that triple homicide are brought back together through a new death that is investigated by the current police chief when he opens up the 1989 case and all the answers are revealed.

I got so engrossed in this book that it was like a history lesson, mystery and love story all in one.

I received an advanced eARC from the publisher through NetGalley.

This is a good book, interesting just not my kind of story. I did like the characters and feel people who enjoy magic and witches will enjoy this.

The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

Review by Sandy Penny, SweetMysteryBooks **** four stars

Myth and legend permeated the book, and delivered an unusual story that was pretty compelling. The book is quite long, but the characters were fleshed out, some quirky, some eerie, some evil, and the potential for any of them to switch sides at any moment. When a traumatized little girl grows up and goes back to the site of her trauma, she finds her aunt, whom she was told had died, is still alive. Her aunt had also been traumatized by the same event, and it left her either crazy or aware of dark forces that torment her. When an old investigation of the event is reopened, it may open the gates of darkness once again. Fear has the townspeople up in arms, demanding justice. But they don't really know what justice is in this paranormal mystery/thriller that will keep you awake at night. I love the involvement of the trees in the story. Almost Druidic.