A review by haley_j_casey
Dance in Shadow and Whisper by Victoria Derubeis, Sarah Godfrey

2.0

This book was very "eh" for me. In all honestly, it felt like a draft instead of a published novel because the author just doesn't explain anything. EVER. Like, okay, yes, I get the basic plot, and I followed along with the characters (despite their bizarre and complicated names). But this was supposed to be a vastly complicated alternate world where supernatural creatures exist and everyone knows it and the hub of activity is Pittsburgh, and I never understood why this was the case? Why magical creatures didn't care to stay hidden? How this had happened? Why their history was such common knowledge? Why they were such a frightening, well-known deal that armed guards were paid to patrol public schools to keep them at bay?

The story begins with a 113-year-old demon girl, Kali, infiltrating a high school alongside a vampire to find out if one of the students there is super important to the supernatural future. But it's vastly unclear why Kali was chosen for this task. Like, being sent on missions isn't exactly something that's common throughout the rest of the book, so this is a very special circumstance, and she's terrible at blending in. No one even prepared her for how to act like a teenager before they sent her in on this hugely meaningful undertaking? She claps her hands over her ears every time she hears the bell, can't so much as unlock a Smartphone—or "cellular telephone" as she calls it, because no one bothered to correct her in her 113 years—doesn't know how to make small talk... It's real painful to watch. And like two days into her mission, her older brother who is VASTLY more adept at blending in joins the team and does so flawlessly. So like, he could have done it the whole time instead? I understand that Kali is important and is good at reading people, but sending in a completely woeful and unprepared spy is just dumb.



So we're not off to a great start.

Then, the whole story starts shifting from Kali's first-person POV to multiple minor characters' third-person POV. I understand wanting to give readers multiple angles to a story, but it did not feel cohesive.

Not to mention a few very blatant edits that should have been made. Words accidentally typed twice, "cognescente" used in place of the word "cognizant," etc etc. Pulled me out of the story.

And it. Is. So. Vague.



There would be moments and conversations that seemingly held huge revelations for the characters, but they were so based on phrases like, "It couldn't be..." or "What makes you come to that conclusion" (when no conclusion has been said aloud; just character inference), or "I suddenly understood," that there was rarely a chance for the reader to understand. They never say something explicitly, and yes, sometimes that works. Sometimes the audience needs to be kept in suspense for a big reveal. But this wasn't that. This was information highly relevant to the plot, and I desperately needed someone to come out and say it so that I could keep pace with the movement of the story. Multiple, major times this happens. It got old.

The premise of this story is solid: Alternate world where the supernatural live among us and everyone knows it. But the world-building and character development was really rough, and I had to scramble to understand rather than letting the book guide me, and that's just not what I was looking for.