Review by Booklist Review
Georgetown resident and mystic Dovey Van Dalen has been bound to Elric Ostergaard, the mystic in charge of the North American territory, since she was a teen. After wrapping up an investigation, she is ready to start a day of pampering for her two-hundredth birthday. Instead, Elric assigns an urgent task: find the Pandora trinket, stolen from a visiting diplomat. This trinket, enclosed in a ring box, has the power to compel anyone who looks at it to commit suicide by the means most abhorrent to them. A news flash alerts Dovey to the first victim, an art dealer. He is not a mystic, but an unbound, or mortal--as is the second victim. As Dovey navigates between the mystic world and the unbound world, she works with an FBI agent, trying not to break cover in the rush to end the string of deaths and rescue the trinket. Fans of Carolyn Hart's Bailey Ruth Ghost mysteries will enjoy meeting Dovey in this first in a new series describing a mystic world parallel to our mortal one.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Laurie (the Cat & Gilley Life Coach Mysteries) blends fantasy, mystery, and romance in this wobbly series launch set in an alternate universe where mystics (or "bounds") live among ordinary humans (or "unbounds"). Beautiful bound Dovey Van Dalen's 200th birthday celebration is interrupted by her boss, bound Elric Ostergaard, for whom she tracks down lost "trinkets" imbued with magical powers. He tells Dovey that the dangerous Promise Trinket, which compels those exposed to it to die by suicide, has gone missing. When wealthy Washington, D.C., gallery owner Augustus Ariti dies in a fire and, a short time later, his sister leaps from her penthouse balcony, Dovey fears the Promise Trinket is responsible. Elric sends Dovey to investigate, and she soon meets hunky unbound model--turned--FBI agent Grant Barlow, who's been assigned to the case. Sparks fly, making Dovey wonder whether it's worth pursuing a taboo romance between a bound and an unbound. Laurie squanders the promising setup with inconsistent magic rules and overwrought prose ("Watching him was like starting at the aurora borealis, inviting a certain marvel and wonder all its own"). It's a misfire. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Dec.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A band of mystics sows mayhem in and around the nation's capital. Dovey Van Dalen hoped to spend her 200th birthday sipping cocktails with her bestie, Ursula Göransdotter, in Georgetown. But when Elric Ostergaard summons Dovey to his headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, she literally can't say no. She's been bound to Elric by a magic spell ever since her father lost her to him in a card game in Copenhagen when she was 18. Her binding does have its upsides. She ages slowly enough so that, even at 200, she looks like a model. And she has access to magical items known to mystics as "trinkets" that provide all sorts of benefits, like rendering their holder invisible or curing mortal wounds. The downside is that she must always do Elric's bidding, even though he has no corresponding duty to honor her or even to refrain from wooing other women. When Elric says he needs to recover the Promise--one of seven uniquely powerful trinkets known as the Pandoras--she hurries back to D.C., where victims of the mystical Promise are dropping like flies. Dovey teams up with Special Agent Grant Barlow of the FBI, who thinks he's investigating a string of suicides, though Dovey knows better. Since the Promise has the power to force those who see it to kill themselves in the most fearsome way imaginable, she knows those suicides are actually the work of whoever stole the mystical trinket. Laurie's series debut packs quite a punch. In addition to murders, there's a juicy romance between Dovey and the handsome special agent, a bunch of gory fight scenes, and heaps of mystic-on-mystic malevolence--enough to satisfy readers who like their puzzles with more than a hint of the supernatural. A magical mystery tour coming to take you away. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
