#othersideofmidnight

I finally finished all her books, so I figured that I should review the one that I hadn’t included before.  This book took me longer to read than the others, and I think I am a little burnt out on the 1920s ghost mystery thing. I didn’t hold that against this book though, since I kind of did it to myself by reading them all in one go. I couldn’t help myself though. 

So onto my final Simone St. James review until she publishes her next book.

Rating: 

I enjoyed this book because it was different from the others in the fact that our protagonist, Ellie Winters, is a medium who communicates with the dead using her powers. Unlike prior heroines who saw the dead, for Ellie this was her profession. Don’t get me wrong, the checklist for “Things That Happen in Every Simone St. James Book” I created in my prior post is met. But, the difference in this book is certainly refreshing, and it made the book feel less procedural for me than some of the prior ones had. 

The romance in this book didn’t seem particularly forced or overwhelming either. I liked seeing her develop as a writer since this is one of her more recent books. The bedroom scene was also tamer, which didn’t detract from the overall storyline. Reading this book made me realize how much the romance had taken away from the ghost story in some of the others. 

Despite the fact that I didn’t down this book with the rapid speed I did some of the others, it may have been my favorite because of the psychics. I have always been interested in them since I read Mary Roach’s book “Spook” which has a chapter about it. I like how the book included some of the things that mediums were doing at the time to fool their clients. I wish it had included some of the others that were more bizarre, like women spewing out cheesecloth and calling it ectoplasm. 

I liked the characters she created, and in particular, I liked Gloria, the main murder who sets off the string of events in this book. There is something bright and bold about her, and part of me was glad she wasn’t the main character. Building up a mystery about Gloria added to her intrigue, and as the book moved along, more of her was revealed. She begins as just a caricature of a flapper, but she becomes more 3D as we move along through the book.