Hello everyone!
And when I need something like this, I usually always return to one of two preferred authors!
You always have to have some in your back pocket that will help you in times like this.
Especially when you don't want to spend yet another two to three hours typing and editing and padding up a post! Hah.
Honestly though, it's not that I mind. It's that I slept horribly tonight (I only got a solid five hours, and the rest was definitely fragmented until I just gave up) and I feel like it's going to be a long ass day without a lot to show for it in the end.
Which means I'm going to try not to complicate my life even more while I'm at it.
Without further ado, then, let's hop straight into the next mystery our favourite rapscallion girl Twyla ends up in.
Ladies and gentlemen: The Charmed Coin.
Twyla, the headstrong girl who thinks anything domestic is boring beyond belief, runs into fellow ghost talker Adrien (whom she saved back in the second book, I believe), and he invites her along to investigate a supposed haunting. A man murdered his wife and daughter at a house, and it can't sell because people say the ghost of him lingers.
So they go, and because this is what it is, they end up at a WRONG house, breaking into someone's actual home, and ending up at the police station, because of course.
Why would it be any different LOL.
Thankfully, Dr. LaRue, who's a good friend of Elinor's and also has a solid head on her shoulders, sees them and rescues them, then she asks the young pair to look into a mystery for her since Elinor isn't here (she still being in the country with her husband and baby, of course).
It's about a coin.
What's so special about a coin, you ask?
Well, this particular one popped up in the pockets of two people who ended up dead. The doctor might not have made the connection if not for the coin itself, but she's found it first in the possession of the old collector, and then in the pocket of the young woman who died.
Twyla grabs this with both hands and off she and Adrien go, firstly meeting with the collector's ghost, who doesn't have a lot of information to give them, honestly, certainly nothing that would explain why the coin, which seems to be from the reign of the one and only queen which reigned but was quickly deposed back in the day, ended up with him.
Visiting the mother of the dead young woman also doesn't help, because the mother is a selfish, narcissistic creature who only cares about herself and how her daughter's death will reflect on HER. Honestly, it's garish to read, but unfortunately people like that do exist so we need to see them in fiction too, to never forget that it's part of reality.
At this point, they kind of deduce that a history museum might be the only point that connects both victims, as both visited at different times, but the investigation gets slightly derailed when Twyla stumbles upon a mystery in her own home: apparently, she's not her parents' daughter!
Distraught after overhearing that some woman named Jeanne Louise is her actual biological mother, she runs out of the house and eventually, with Adrien's help, finds a safe landing at the town house of Lady Vaalentina Fontaine - aka, Elinor's sister-in-law.
Valentina kindly agrees to have Twyla stay with her for a bit because she owes Elinor a favour or two, and also she's intrigued by the mystery the two young people present before her, about the coin. Town life is boring when you're on top of the world, so it's not like she has anything better to do with her time anyway, and to top it off she's a much more interesting character once you get to know her than you'd initially believe.
Worried that the girl's ghost is going to do something stupid after she teams up with Valentina's town house Noise Ghost (who hates anyone of the female persuasion and can be quite violent), Twyla still presses on and returns to the museum - after which, things take a TURN.
The coin shows up in her own pocket. And she manages to escape death about ... four times? Is it five? I lost count LOL.
But she's not easily shaken and is determined to solve this, so with Valentina's help she and Adrien go to see the sole surviving portrait of the deceased queen, and somehow, Twyla manages to walk into the painting itself. She converses with the queen, figures out the coin wants to return to her because it used to be the possession of an architect who loved said queen, and so, after leaving the thing with the ruler, she emerges back into the real world with the case finally solved.
No more mystery deaths by charmed coins! Yay!
That only leaves dealing with the ghosts left behind because of this mess. The old collector fades away quietly on his own, but the girl paired up with the Noise Ghost? She's trying to get revenge on her mother, so Valentina and Twyla go to some sort of party hosted by the woman (look, there's poor taste and then there's hosting a social event after your daughter's death), where it becomes clear that, no matter what the two ghosts do, the mom is oblivious.
She cares too much about herself to notice anything else.
Twyla gently explains this to the girl's ghost and helps her pass on, at which point it's time to face her own problems.
She finally gathers the courage to speak to her father, who reveals that Jeanne Louise was his wife's younger sister; she ran away from home after meeting a man the family disapproved of, and by the time they caught up with her two years later, she was pregnant, and said man was nowhere to be found. She unfortunately passed away during birth because of complications, and Twyla's parents - the ones who raised her - took her in. They would have told her everything eventually, after her twenty-third birthday, but she accidentally overheard something she shouldn't have.
And oh yes, both of them love her to bits, no matter what she heard in a moment of frustration. They want her to come home.
So Twyla does. Because family will always be family, no matter what shape it takes.
This book continues Ms Nash's winning streak, as always. We're looking deeper into Twyla's family and I am HERE for it!
I hope we learn who her father is - or was. I feel like he'll be the key to a lot of things and an answer to many, many questions.
I always love seeing more of Dr. LaRue, but Tristan's sister was also a very pleasant surprise. I quite like her!
As for Twyla, she remains her usual feisty, indignant self in the face of the mystery-du-jour. Not even a death-summoning coin will dampen her spirit! I love her so much, she is so very, very young still, and I adore that it was her father who came to fetch her. We've seen a lot of her mother recently, but less of her father outside him being a stern and austere figure. He loves her SO much, it's quite clear.
I can't wait for the last two stories in this series!
I hope we learn who her father is - or was. I feel like he'll be the key to a lot of things and an answer to many, many questions.
I always love seeing more of Dr. LaRue, but Tristan's sister was also a very pleasant surprise. I quite like her!
As for Twyla, she remains her usual feisty, indignant self in the face of the mystery-du-jour. Not even a death-summoning coin will dampen her spirit! I love her so much, she is so very, very young still, and I adore that it was her father who came to fetch her. We've seen a lot of her mother recently, but less of her father outside him being a stern and austere figure. He loves her SO much, it's quite clear.
I can't wait for the last two stories in this series!
xx
*image not mine
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