Reviews with content warning for Rape - The London Séance Society

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The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner

12 reviews

lakea's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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emilywemily6's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This one is kind of hard for me to rate, especially because I loved Penner’s first book! The writing at the beginning was hard to follow and so I was confused for the first half of the book that the beginning seance was Evie’s. The first half was kind of slow while the second half got more interesting and definitely picked up speed. I feel like these characters were overly sexualized and the focus on lust detracted from the story and from the other personality traits of the characters- literally everyone is obsessed with sex in this book. I found the society’s secrets very intriguing and how the scandal kept growing, though some of the “twists” were very predictable. I also feel like the ending wrapped up too nicely because of the paranormal being able to do things these characters could not. Lenna did some stupid things and often didn’t even try to fight her way out of tricky situations. I would have appreciated a bit more effort on her part. This book feels different than Penner’s previous and while I generally enjoyed it, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.

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sareidle's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was recommended to me by a friend and I had a fun time reading it! The dual perspective creates tension as the characters get closer to uncovering the conspiracy at the heart of the book.

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tuhkasirius's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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savheath's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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unboxedjack's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

Really disappointed with this one. It read like a sixth grader dabbling in queer fanfic: no character development, a predictable and lackluster plot, and eye rolling prose (if it can even be called that).

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melliedm's review

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

I loved and devoured The Lost Apothecary and was certain I would love The London Seance Society, but I’m afraid it’s been maddeningly disappointing.

Do you ever watch HGTV-style shows, where they leave you with a cliffhanger before the commercial break, and then when they come back they replay all of the clips leading up to the cliffhanger so that if you just landed on it by channel flipping you wouldn’t be lost? This book does that. Each chapter begins with what truly feels like a recap of what I literally just finished reading, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Lenna’s spiritualist sister was murdered. Despite her skepticism, Lenna approaches her sister’s mentor Vaudeline to ask her to return to London to perform a seance, but the medium has good reason not to return.

The mystery is unfolds through two perspectives: Lenna’s, and a man named Mr. Morley who similarly entreats Vaudeline to return to London to perform a seance. Not for Lenna’s sister, but for the chair of the London Seance Society.

Conceptually, it sounds pretty great. Add in the thorough research and the sapphic relationship brewing between Lenna and Vaudeline and this should have been The One for me. Alas…

Despite Seance Society being a mystery, there’s very little patience and an extraordinary amount of explaining. Reveals happen so frequently that it’s almost exhausting, and each is paired with a thorough description of how the clues connect. It was frustratingly difficult to invest in characters when several passages would be spent spelling out the clues the author had already made clear. There was also an avoidance of holding any cards back: characters would frequently confront another with incomplete information and gain little from it, disposing of any dramatic tension we could have felt by knowing that, say, Lenna had access to secrets that other characters weren’t aware of. Instead, she would learn something and then a few paragraphs later reveal it.

Remember when I said Lenna is a skeptic? Well, in this novel spirits are absolutely real, and she’s given reason after reason to believe in them. And yet, she denies it over and over. Yet, this skeptic is also not skeptical enough for it to really matter: it’s a point of interpersonal conflict and doesn’t really engage with the rest of the world. She’ll have a disagreement with Vaudeline, and then by the end of that chapter or the start of the next she’ll shrug and move on. Perhaps if she was shown through her behaviour as more skeptical and was consistent in this I could have believed it, but it just came across as someone trying to write a character they don’t understand.

The final problem is Lenna’s relationship with Vaudeline. When we meet these characters there’s already (supposedly) a romantic tension between them. We’re told again and again that there’s something there. But we really aren’t shown it. I so desperately wanted to believe that these two women were attracted to one another, that they wanted one another enough to put aside their beliefs on the occult—but I couldn’t. They had little to no chemistry and because we were dropped into their relationship when they had already acquainted themselves with one another we didn’t get to see what that push/pull was like.

All in all, this sapphic seance mystery was sure a sapphic seance mystery, but that’s about it. I truly hope this, and not Lost Apothecary, was a one-off—I want to like Penner’s work so much. Next time, though, I’ll probably wait for my library to get a copy.

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

Title: The London Séance Society
Author: Sarah Penner
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: 2.75
Pub Date: March 7, 2023

T H R E E • W O R D S

Atmospheric • Reckless • Mystifying

📖 S Y N O P S I S

1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.

Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I am a sucker for a gorgeous floral cover, and this one certainly fits the bill, meaning I added it to my TBR without even reading the synopsis. Maybe that's where I made my first mistake, but this book ended up just not working for me.

The premise of two women performing séances in order to solve murders was so clever. And in my opinion the first 50 pages were very atmospheric and mysterious drawing me into the depths of the Victorian era. While I do have an interest in the afterlife and spiritual world, for me there was too much focus on the whodunit aspect than the actual paranormal aspect. As the story unfolds, it gets overly repetitive and it is easy to figure out who did it very early on. Therefore, the unraveling of the mystery felt sooooooo drawn out, and the séance wasn't as big a part of the story as it should have been.

But my biggest qualm is with the audio. It irritates me to no end when narrators mispronounce words in audiobooks. In this one there are a lot of French words or words drawn from the French language, and as someone who speaks French, these mispronunciations were incredibly bad! Like not even close! This issue could have been avoided if I'd kept to reading with my eyeballs, but I am not sure I'd have been able to make it through if I'd stuck to just the written copy.

At the end of the day, this one just fell really flat for me in its execution. I didn't care about or connect with any of the characters. And of course, I had a hard time getting passed the poor attempt at French by the narrators.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• fans of Murder She Wrote
• readers who like paranormal historical fiction

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"We may die, but we are never really gone."

"There's no money in truth."

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heavster's review

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dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

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psteele824's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.5

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