Genevieve Taylor is a Sidhe – one of the noble fae – and she’s unusual, even in present-day London where celebrity vampires, eccentric goblins and scheming lesser fae mix freely with the human population. Genny is a rising star at Spellcrackers.com, where she finds the M’ in magic – and that invariably leads to mischief, malice and – too often – murder. When Mr October, one of the hot calendar pin-up vamps, is accused of violently murdering his girlfriend, Genny’s called on to repay an old debt and prove his innocence. And she’s about to learn that some magic isn’t all its cracked up to be.
This was another series I found searching around on Goodreads, I think it was a recommendation. It had really mixed reviews usually a one star or a five and not much in between. I thought I would give it a try it has a mixture of supernatural characters from the main character being a Fae and the bad guys are all vampires and it takes place in London, all some of my favorite things. It is the first book in the Spellcrackers series and yeah it does read like a first book, flaws and all. This has some spoilers so just warning you if you want to keep reading.
The main character Genevieve is one of the fae and she is high court sidhe, so other fae show her respect when they meet her and vamps want to drink her because fae blood is rare, tasty and powerful. She works at Spellcrackers where she “breaks” spells for clients and generally tries to stay away from the vampire population. I liked her enough as a character and found the whole Spellcracker thing really interesting, but she has secrets about her past and only some of them get revealed and at the very end others still not explained but are kinda crucial to the over all story, like why the hell does she have that tattoo spell? She also has the 3V virus which makes her susceptible to vampires, but if the knowledge came out she would lose her job at Spellcrackers and the perks and
protections that go along with it. The minor characters for the most part were interesting at least the fae ones, the vamps were pretty much cliche; pretty and deadly.
The plot was just a basic whodunnit, Genevieve is called in to investigate a murder by the family of the accused the body appears to have been drained by a vamp but the accused vampire’s family believes a spell killed the girl and want Gen to find it. Several factions of vamps are interested in what she finds and all for their own agendas. This is where it gets confusing, too many characters all at once and all with their own hidden plans being hinted at and throw into that hints being dropped about Genevieves past just made it a mess to read, I kept going back a rereading just to try and remember who the hell was who.
The world building though was very good, the story takes place in modern day London and all Supes are out of the closet and living in the open, with different areas being controlled by different factions. I liked the idea of Spellcrackers as a business and it has great potential to create great story lines in future books. But you know that way everything comes together in a book the world, the characters and the plot that makes it a great read that was just not here in this book, it was close but not quite. I did like the book overall and I am starting the second one
because I do think the series does have promise so we will see.
3 stars. Lots of promise but a little confusing.
THE SWEET SCENT OF BLOOD
Spellcrackers #1
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