Sunday, June 13, 2010

Review: Street Magic Black London #1 by Caitlin Kittredge

Title: Street Magic
Author: Caitlin Kittredge
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Black London #1






My feelings for this book are all over the place. It's one of those rare books where I'm still not sure if I liked it or not. I think it may have fallen victim to what I call the genre switch. I read so many different genres that when I go and read a genre that I haven't read in awhile the first book I read normally takes me much longer to read.  I generally  have a hard time getting into the plot twists because they are so different then the genre I read before-in this case a lot of contemporary romances. Or maybe it was the book that took the hit to set up the rest of the series-I'm a firm believer that there must be one weak book in a series to set up the other stories in the series. I'm not sure why this is, I've just found it to be true.

Pete Caldecott was 16 when her older sister MGs boyfriend,  Jack Winter talked her into going to a cometary to perform some magic. However when they summoned the spirit something went wrong.  Pete was sure that the spirit had killed Jack that day until 10 years later when working as a detective she finds out that he's the informant for a case she's working on to find a missing child.


Jack isn't anything like Pete remembers. He used to be full of life-now he's just full of drugs and not particularly likable. As Jack and Pete work together to find other children that have gone missing, Pete discovers that the kidnappers aren't human and the world isn't as it seems. It turns out that Jack can see spirits-and fey. The more they investigate the fey the closer the two become and the more Pete's world turns upside down.

I had a really hard time connecting to Pete. She was tough and unforgiving-something I love in my Urban Fantasy heroines, but she was almost too unforgiving. I really liked Jack and actually connected more to his character and what he had been through then Pete-which is really unusual for me. I normally feel more connected to the heroine in the books I read. While I still enjoyed this book enough to read the second book in this series, something was just off and I can't quite pinpoint what it was. Don't you just hate it when you can define what it is about a book that bothers you?

Sigh Meter: Low
Crush Meter: Medium
Sleep Meter: High
Sizzle Meter: Low