Something Strange and Deadly

Something Strange and Deadly  by Susan Dennard

I admit it. I was judging the books by its cover. I love the dress on the cover. I would sew that if I had enough skill. Then the description said zombies in 1876 and I took the book home.

There are not a lot of zombies. And not a lot of dresses. The book cover lied to me! Dennard wrote a good book, but not what I expected to get. I was expecting zombies to eat peoples and for there to be Austen-esque society stuff going on. Instead, I got a book about magic and love and a very watered down mystery that everyone but the characters saw coming from halfway through the book. I’ll say it again; it is a good book if you want a love story with a backdrop of a light mystery involving magic and voodoo. Eleanor is engaging as a main character: spunky but a little naïve. She gets some great lines:

“Miss Fitt, you know curiosity gets men killed."
I grinned. "Then I daresay it's good I'm a woman.”

Two of the three spirit hunters were intriguing. Jie most of all (I’ll leave why as a surprise). The villain never really comes into his own as a character. Perhaps the book just ended too soon, or maybe it was a deliberate choice to leave him easy to be angry at.
 

So the real plot line is Miss Eleanor Fitt (age 16, of the Pennsylvania Fitts) is missing a brother, father is dead, and mother is obsessed with seeing her married off. It’s 1876-what can you expect? So Eleanor thinks her brother is in trouble, and then the dead start wandering around the City and sometimes they are dead peeps on a mission for a necromancer, and sometimes they are just hungry and want to eat you. Then the childhood acquaintances of Eleanor’s older brother start dying. Eleanor is convinced her brother is next in line for death and needs help, so Eleanor sneaks off  to the city exhibition to find the “Spirit Hunters” to save her brother. Only, they don’t want to help. Then after a whole bunch of trouble (mostly cause by Eleanor), she falls for one of them, and then they discover who the necromancer murdering people is and all of them go off to fight him…  And spoilers… 

 

I don’t read a lot of this type of book so I’ll trust Goodreads when it tells me if you liked this one try:
 

Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock

And any Cassandra Clare

~Amy W.