Review by Booklist Review
Prohibition-era Kansas City gets the magical treatment in this debut. Rose Lane, aka Luna Alvarado, passes for white while working days as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and nights running her own speakeasy in the Jazz District. While her light skin allows her to find success in business, she must continually tamp down her real identity as the latest in a long line of earth brujas descended from a family of Mexican immigrants. She calls on her power just enough to charm the men around her with her kisses--a practice that can get a little messy from time to time. Her ambition to open a higher-class establishment, though, puts her at odds with some powerful enemies, including the Mob and the Klan, and Rose will need to use all of her abilities, along with her family and friends' support, to make it out alive. Rose is a heroine to root for and Mesa's writing has charm and wit--and there's plenty of action to keep readers invested right until the very last pages. For fans of Alix E. Harrow's The Once and Future Witches (2020).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mesa's ambitious but messy historical fantasy debut plunges deep into the underbelly of Prohibition-era Kansas City, following half-white, half-Mexican Luna Alvarado as she crafts a new life for herself as Rose Lane, cub reporter by day, and speakeasy manager by night. Passing as white is not as difficult as passing as mortal; she's also half bruja, or earth witch, and her powers manifest in an ability to charm men into doing her will by kissing them. She uses this charm to open a club "with real booze and a real orchestra" in the ritzy Hotel Bellerive--but as soon as she does, the Klan tries to shut her down, local mobsters extort her, all the men in her life try to claim and control her, and Al Capone schemes to use her to expand his operations across the Midwest. The result is fun but shallow, with brassy one-note characters who constantly repeat themselves and often speak in goofily rendered dialects ("Hey, latecoma', I'm the one who's skewa'd here!") in between bewildering or groan-worthy descriptions of emotions ("his eyes hardening in sable angst"). This is a lesser addition to the recent slew of 1920s-set SFF, one perhaps best left to diehard fans of Prohibition-era historical fantasy. Agent: Rachel Brooks, Bookends Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Rose Lane and her ragtag band of social outcasts take on City Hall, the Mob, and the Ku Klux Klan in Mesa's debut Prohibition-era historical fantasy. Rose has a secret: she is a Latina, passing as white to provide for her family. But it's her power as a bruja, an earth witch, that makes the local mob covet her illegal jazz club and her power. They'll do anything to own her, and she'll do anything to keep her family safe--even finally using the magic that she's always seen as more curse than gift. Rose knows the price for being both female and non-white in a time and place that steps on both at every turn. That she wins by embracing her roots, gives the novel a kind of magic that urban fantasy readers will love. VERDICT Mesa's debut mixes a bit of Mexican folktale, a chunk of magical realism, and tons of period detail into a page-turning urban fantasy that takes the glitter of Boardwalk Empire and combines it with a story of found family, mob violence, and romance.--Marlene Harris
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
One bruja--a witch--takes on the underbelly of 1920s Kansas City. Luna Alvarado leads a double life; when she visits her family's boxcar, she's Luna, half-bruja with only the gift of charm, but in the city, she's Rose Lane, reporter by day and proprietress of the speak-easy the River Rose by night. Luna's abuela has powerful earth magic, and some of that power has passed down to Luna--enough to influence men through a kiss, but nothing more, possibly because of her White father. If his blood has diluted her Mexican magic, it has also granted her the ability to pass as White, an opportunity her mother insists she seize, even if it means growing apart from her family. Luna also has ambitions of her own: She wants to manage a thriving jazz club, no husband necessary. As Luna takes chance after chance in pursuing her dreams, she becomes ever more entangled with mob factions, rich men who keep secrets, and even the Ku Klux Klan. Tense action and scheming inside and outside the bedroom are interspersed with reflections on Luna's identity and the inequities of the time that leave so many in the shadows. While the plot and characters are engaging, some dialogue is hampered by overwritten accents that, rather than establishing the setting, verge instead toward parody. Clunky voices aside, the friends and family surrounding Luna are a joy to meet--if she can find it within herself to let them in. Good flapper fun, if a bit rough around the edges. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
