His straight forward, no-nonsense way of handling things made me very happy in a book full of indecisive people. The one character I do like is Michael, New Orleans’ leading detective. He may look all cool with his panama hat and nifty revolver, but he comes off as dead inside. He is the mysterious, gorgeous, and dangerous male love interest, with the personality of a piece of celery. As for Sebastian, he also feels arrogant and a tad cliché. Everything feels like it revolves around her, and I just do not enjoy being insider her head. She is independent and rude, but she gets praised for it. She is gorgeous, with an hourglass waist and a well endowed chest that everyone keeps raving about when they talk to her (and all the guys like her too, of course). I find Celine to be a little too arrogant for my taste and have a hard time relating to her. I also do not care for Celine or Sebastian. I just wished there were more of those sprinkled throughout the rest of the book. The last fourth of the book does pick up, and I did enjoy some heart-in-the-throat kind of moments. I found myself having a difficult time wanting to pick the story back up because it felt aimless. Sure, we had tastes of something lurking in the shadows, but there was no real threat to Celine or anyone we really cared about until well over halfway through the book. The story spent too long of time with Celine milling about New Orleans without any real threat of danger.
Now, the biggest problem for me with this book is the pacing. Celine doesn’t know who she can trust, or even if she’ll survive the next morning. Panic ensues, more bodies are found torn apart as if by something not of this world, and Celine finds herself as the next target of a serial killer. As Celine battles her feelings for Sebastian and the ghosts of her own past, a body of one of the girls from Celine’s convent is found dead, and drained of blood in the lair of the La Cour des Lions. The leader of the group, Sebastian Saint Germain, quickly catches her eye, and something sparks between them. With her independent spirit and thirst for excitement, it is not long till Celine finds herself in the heart of New Orleans’ seedy underbelly, known as the La Cour des Lions, a lavish mafia-esque group of unnaturally beautiful illusionists and magicians. She quickly falls in love with the boisterous city- the sights, the smells, the danger- but struggles to conform to the ways of nuns in the convent. The story follows Celine Rousseau, a dressmaker from Paris, who had to flee to America after a tragic event and take refuge in a New Orleans convent. Instead I found it to be a stifling and slow crawl through a story with too many underdeveloped characters, too little conflict, only whispers of romance, and an insufferable protagonist.
I gave it chance after chance, hoping that the next chapter would whisk me away into vampiric bliss. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young ReadersĪlas, I wanted to love this book.
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