Spectacle ARC Review! |Last Review From 2018!

Hi friends! I’m back with my last need-to-post review from 2018! Can we all just appreciate my procrastinating skills?! After all, a princess is never late. Everyone else is simply early*. So let us begin!

*if you caught that reference, you deserve a round of applause. If you didn’t, that’s okay I’m coming to your house and making you watch a certain movie.

A YA murder mystery in which a young reporter must use her supernatural visions to help track down a killer targeting the young women of Paris.

Paris, 1887.

Sixteen-year-old Nathalie Baudin writes the daily morgue column for Le Petit Journal. Her job is to summarize each day’s new arrivals, a task she finds both fascinating and routine. That is, until the day she has a vision of the newest body, a young woman, being murdered–from the perspective of the murderer himself.

When the body of another woman is retrieved from the Seine days later, Paris begins to buzz with rumors that this victim may not be the last. Nathalie’s search for answers sends her down a long, twisty road involving her mentally ill aunt, a brilliant but deluded scientist, and eventually into the Parisian Catacombs. As the killer continues to haunt the streets of Paris, it becomes clear that Nathalie’s strange new ability may make her the only one who can discover the killer’s identity–and she’ll have to do it before she becomes a target herself.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

This follows a reporter named Nathalie, who, while visiting the morgue for an article, touches the viewing glass and gets a glimpse of the murder. In reverse. So she’s obviously shook, and is trying to reconcile what she knows about the world around her and the secrets everyone has been keeping from her. Meanwhile, the killer? Yeah, he knows who she is…

This was spectacular. YA mysteries are far too often filled with petty drama, unlikable characters, and predictable twists. Spectacle, however, was none of these things. The author did a beautiful job of balancing gorgeous French phrases and historical buildings with just a touch of magic.

Jodie’s prose paints pictures in your mind, it plants thoughts of true depth to be pondered upon at a later notice. That’s a more fancy way of saying I LOVED HER WRITING *flails forever. Even if the flow was a little bit choppy, I found the entirety of it to be rather impressive for a debut author.

Nathalie was definitely a strong female character in many ways. Her dedication to being a reporter was actually rather inspirational, so don’t blame me when I run off to join the online newspaper. I will say that I sometimes felt like her personality wasn’t always steady. Sometimes she’d make choices I didn’t think went with choices she would otherwise make? And sometimes her actions would annoy me but that’s probably because I get impatient. And want the answers.

This was ridiculously twisty? Like, I THOUGHT I saw a couple of things coming but haha no. So many tiny details come into play later, but in ways I never expected. Of course, there were a few moments where I thought NOOOOO, FORCED ROMANCE but I was actually pleasantly surprised! Sometimes, I thought that the plot was a little scattered but I was honestly too caught up in everything to care.

And the magic was too perfect? Like, it’s magic/science and it’s so flipping cool. The way it’s integrated into the story is pure brilliance. THAT CLIFFHANGER THOUGH. I also really appreciate that Nathalie actually has a family? Which for some reason is rare in YA.

I’d totally recommend this to fans of Stalking Jack The Ripper! While it lacks the wonderful sass of Thomas Cresswell, it DOES have a female character placed in a “traditionally male role” in historical fiction, a murder mystery, and awesomeness. Except that this has a touch of magic, and a more well-thought out mystery!

So all in all, I was really, really happy with this one! I had so much fun with it and while I can see that some people won’t like it, this was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. And I know that some of you will feel the same! Tell me: are you excited for this? What’s your favorite YA mystery?