Tome Thursday: The Blood Locket Mystery

 

Hello everyone!

 

Welcome back to the blog.

 

I'm finally climbing out of the hole that is our Mardi Gras, which we celebrated just this week, and for which the bakery I work at produced ... insane amounts of sweet treats, let's put it that way.

 

So we're FINALLY now entering more normal stages again, and I don't feel like I'm drowning anymore.

 

Instead, I get to enjoy some really, really good books.

 

Among them is this one.

 

I actually read it much sooner than it's making the debut here on the blog, but I just couldn't get to it sooner.

 

Too many books, too little time.

 

Now, at last, here we are back in Byrd Nash's imaginary world where ghosts run around and ghost talkers try to lasso them back, and one apprentice finds herself on her own for a mysterious case.

 

That's what we get in The Blood Locket Mystery!

 

I've basically read the entire Ghost Talker series, and have reviews on all six books on my blog, so I'm going to link that down below and you can go back and read those if you feel like it.

 

The Blood Locket Mystery, however, covers the story of Twyla, Elinor's apprentice, who gets tasked with returning a locket she and her mentor used to conduct a seance (that didn't work) to its rightful owner.

 

Of course, in doing so, Twyla manages to literally stumble into a mystery that's bigger than just that one silly locket.

 

She learns that the woman who originally hired them seems to have led them by the nose a bit, and that her mother is a fairly good sleuth herself when asked for help finding where the girl who'd died had worked before her untimely demise.

 

Then she goes to the Beyond - which is something that's super easy for her, making her very much The Only One who can do it - and meets a gambling ghost, Bryce Aarden, who was the original owner of the locket she's currently holding onto.

 

He gave it to a lover of his ... and apparently she gave it to her child?

 

Twyla's confused there, but continues on the hunt to figure out what actually happened, learning Emmy (the dead girl) wasn't pregnant when she drowned, though apparently she was stepping out with someone.

 

Twyla might never have gotten to much of a point if she hadn't visited lawyers connected to the family searching for their missing grandchild, something they post in the newspaper of course, and he reveals that a long while ago, a brother and sister married their respective spouses. The brother's wife couldn't carry a child to term, but the sister could, and in her jealousy and fit of madness, the brother's wife pronounced the girl stillborn, but had the nanny abscond with her.

 

Only, as she was diagnosed with cancer, she's trying to make amends, hence the search, and how Twyla even got to this point in the story.

 

Which is when the woman who adopted Emmy comes back into play, accusing Twyla of stealing the locket and demanding her due as a reward for rearing the girl!

 

That's all well and good ... except Twyla mentions that the dead one isn't REALLY the granddaughter.

 

She was just really good friends with the actual one - whom her mother met, natch - and pinched that locket which was her heirloom.

 

And Bryce has a tale to tell later too: having overheard the matriarch and her son speaking about it, apparently his lover got pregnant - well, HE got her pregnant - but a rich merchant (of this family we've been dealing with all book long) also fell for her, and because she wasn't an idiot she passed the kid off as his, but kept the locket as a connection to her impoverished lover.

 

Twyla, having done her duty and also managing to bypass having to spend her summer at the sanatorium where the Morpheus Society (her employer and educator) keeps their troubled persons, is very happy with herself, even after all her (mis)adventures.

 

She's just mad Bryce made her smudge all her nice journal writing!

 

Hhhhahahahah, oh Twyla!

I didn't mind her one way or another in the main series, but I feel she REALLY shines here on her own, out of Elinor's shadow.

The mystery is also artfully done, it took me a moment to connect the dots and suspect what Twyla then explained.

I am ABSOLUTELY in this for the curiosity that's her talent with the Beyond - and Bryce! The Duke will always have my heart, but the gambling ghost that acts so differently from other ghosts intrigues me.

I have a hunch. I'll keep it to myself for now.

All in all, an entertaining and intriguing introduction to this series! Absolutely recommend, if only to witness the chaos that follows in Twyla's wake. She's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure!

 

xx

*image not mine

 

Ghost Talker Series