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arealpageturner's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Rape, Murder, and Child abuse
lornography's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
This well told gothic fairy tale is a cautionary story of what comes of actions based on appearances.
Set in Paris during the mid-to-late 19th century, we experience love, vengeance and redemption through the eyes of two estranged spiritist sisters. There is Sherlockian mystery combined with Shakespearean tragedy and all the tropes of the Victorian era.
The character development is on point, you care deeply about the focal ladies and their grande plights (with a side of sapphic wooing and cooing that is delightfully coquettish). The settings are portrayed in such detail that they play out during the reading experience as if watching a compelling mind-movie. While more Parisian flair could have possibly added to the book’s supernatural mystique, in all, Spitting Gold is easily a highly recommended novel full of heart-pounding suspense and heart-breaking emotion!
Much appreciation goes out to author, Carmella Lowkis, and Atria Books (Simon & Schuster) for the opportunity to experience Spitting Gold in advance of its May 14th, 2024 release.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Lesbophobia, Emotional abuse, Grief, Terminal illness, Alcoholism, Abandonment, Child death, Child abuse, and Death of parent
Moderate: Violence, Dementia, Suicide, Homophobia, Sexism, Gore, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Confinement, and Kidnapping
Minor: War, Infidelity, Sexual assault, Rape, Colonisation, and Suicide attempt
malily8312's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Spitting gold is a difficult book to rate for me. We begin our story with Sylvie, the good girl who got out of the slums, married rich, and never wants to go back. She is convinced by her sister, Charlotte, to return for one last con, returning to the world of faking spirit medium powers to scam money from the grieving. However she finds herself out of her depth as she begins to realize that many of the events surrounding the haunting she is meant to be fabricating don’t have easy answers.
Sylvie is our point of view character for nearly half this book, and every moment stuck in her head was unbearable. She was primarily concerned with her marriage (which we had never seen when it was good, so I did not particularly care when it started to go bad) and judging her sister. She is selfish and vain and illogical. Also her story dragged, focusing on characters we had no reason to like rather than the interesting elements of the plot: namely the spirit mediums and their gothically tragic clients.
If we had not switched perspectives to Charlotte halfway through the book, I would not have finished it. As it was, not knowing that that perspective change was coming, I very nearly didn’t get to it.
When we finally do shift perspectives halfway through, the book became leaps and bounds better. The writing was strong throughout, and in this second half it became apparent that Sylvie’s character flaws were deliberate, a set up so we could better understand her dynamic and role in Charlotte’s story. Had the entire thing been from Charlotte’s perspective, this would have been a 4-4.5 start book.
With the new point of view character, this becomes a beautiful story about family bonds, betrayal, love, and loyalty. We gain new insights into the mystery of the family Sylvie and Charlotte are conning (which had always been intriguing, but took up too little of Sylvies story), and into how the girls grew up together. We begin to understand the fractious bonds of these two sisters, informed by our unpleasant time in Sylvies head, but fleshed out and given dimension by our time in Charlotte’s. I cared about Charlotte and the people populating her world in a way I’d never had the chance to with Sylvie.
I think I understand what this book was going for. It was meant to lure us in with Sylvies perspective, set us up to believe her since she was our narrator. We were meant to sympathize with Sylvie, thé good sister, who maybe wasn’t perfect but tried to do what was right while her ungrateful and unsympathetic sister blamed her for falling in love and leaving. Then when we flip to Charlotte’s perspective, we’re shown that we had a biased picture and realize that everything was always more complicated than that. This is spoiled by two things. The first is that the ‘foreshadowing’ during Sylvies section, in other words the indications that she wasn’t actually the perfect sister, were so heavy handed as to make it painfully obvious that Sylvie kinda sucked. The second was that it was not clear that we would be changing perspectives at all, meaning it very much seemed that we would be stuck with an uninteresting, unsympathetic, nearly unbearable narrator for the entire story, and that her world view was the one we were meant to accept.
This book has a lot of potential, and once I got to the halfway mark it became a really good read. However I did not enjoy getting there.
Arc provided by Atria books via NETGALLEY in exchange for an honest review
Content Warnings
Moderate: Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Confinement, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Suicide, Alcoholism, Child death, Dementia, Child abuse, Homophobia, and Rape
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