Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.79 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 (mostly for violence) In 1919, Ada Navarra—the intrepid daughter of immigrants—and Corinne Wells—a spunky, devil-may-care heiress—make an unlikely pair. But at the Cast Iron nightclub in Boston, anything and everything is possible. At night, on stage together, the two best friends, whose “afflicted” blood gives them the ability to create illusions through art, weave magic under the employ of Johnny Dervish, the club’s owner and a notorious gangster. By day, Ada and Corinne use these same skills to con the city’s elite in an attempt to keep the club afloat. When a “job” goes awry and Ada is imprisoned, she realizes they’re on the precipice of danger. Only Corinne—her partner in crime—can break her out of Haversham Asylum. But once Ada is out, they face betrayal at every turn. (goodreads.com) PSA: Please take a moment to put on your favorite swing music or electro swing music. If you are unfamiliar with this type of music I have created a playlist for you which you can find here (and some of the songs on that playlist you’ll find are by a channel called Postmodern Jukebox, and if you like popular songs being turned into vintage songs you should really go check it out because it is amazing). *end PSA* I’m sure we’ve all read or will read The Great Gatsby and that we all have opinions on it. Personally, I wasn’t really a fan of it. I know the characters are supposed to be people who the reader dislikes, but I think F. Scott Fitzgerald did too good of a job. Obviously, you are free to feel about it how you will, I just didn’t like it. The Great Gatsby takes place toward the end of the 1920’s I believe, and Iron Cast takes place right as that era was getting started so they aren’t exactly at the same time, but they had a lot of the same things going on with Prohibition, dance clubs, racism, living life on the edge, and fantastic music. So forgive me, but I’m going to clump them into the same time period. As far as “Roaring Twenties” books go, I like this one much better than I like The Great Gatsby. Maybe because this book is about teenage girls so I can relate to it better, or maybe because Iron Cast was focused more on danger, crime, politics, and excitement than a convoluted love story. There are two love stories in this book, but they are really well written and they don’t take up the whole focus of the plot. The characters are actually more interested in solving their huge problems than they are interested in smooching up a storm. Which was quite refreshing. The set up for this book is really interesting and grabs the reader’s interest immediately. It kind of reminded me of X-Men, but in the 20’s. There are these people called “hemopaths” who have superpowers that they can control by wielding the arts. For example, songsmiths can make you feel emotions or forget things if they are playing music or singing. I don’t want to talk too much about the powers because I don’t want to spoil it for you if you read it, but there are some really cool ones that work really well with the plot. And the reason it reminded me of X-Men is because society hates the hemopaths because of their abilities. The characters were great and I could honestly spend this whole post just talking about them. I promise I won’t examine every single character individually though. We’d be here for a while. I’ll just tell you about the main characters. We have Ada Navarra as one of the two protagonists. Out of her and the other MC I think she’s my favorite. She was witty, kind, and smart, but she wasn’t always sure of herself and sometimes she made mistakes. She has a lot to deal with, what with not only being a hemopath, but also being a person of color in the 1920’s. She handles her difficult situations with a level head and she acts like a real person. Ada’s best friend, Corinne, was also pretty great. She was the more humorous of the two and the more excitable. In the book she is a marvelous con woman and can think on her feet. Even though tricking someone out of their money is something that would make me feel sick for doing, I always love reading about clever con artist characters. I love it when they outsmart everyone else in the room and do it all with a smile on their face. And typically those characters are men or boys (or twelve year old criminal masterminds) so it was really fun to have the fairly feminine Corinne out there making fools of the bad guys. Another character worth mentioning is Gabriel Stone. AKA the obligatory young adult novel mysterious brooding hunk. Alright, he was more than just a hunk. He was also kind and open to new ideas, which is a bigger deal than you think. How many YA guys - who aren’t the main character - can you think of who take time to consider both sides of every argument and who admit when they are wrong? Seriously, tell me if you think of any because none are coming to mind right now. Moving on, I really loved the way the plot fell together and how everything worked. I liked the mystery and secrets woven through the old timey gang atmosphere. The hemopath powers made it a fantastical read for anyone who likes for their historical fiction to play a little outside of history, and the glitz and glam of it all was fun to read about. I highly recommend reading this book with a bit of period music playing in the background if you like music while you read. It will really bring it to life for you, especially since they are usually playing music in the story. That about wraps up my review, I hope you enjoyed it! Reading any good books this summer? I’m very slowly making my way through my TBR pile… and adding more things to it. Well, they’re playing my song, so I’d better run! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28818313-iron-cast
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