Very curious book. I enjoyed it after a slow start...took so long to love the characters I was left wanting more time with them after that happened. Probably not as engaging as Howe's Physick Book of Deliverance Dane but still well worth your time. ( )

Ok, liked her first one better. ( )

Boston in 1915. Story moves back and forth from a mother and daughter on the Titanic to their family back in Boston to the father's youth in Shanghai China. Main character is daughter Sibyl who discovers she can see in a crystal ball while under influence of opium. She can see into the future.
Novel is interesting and an enjoyable read. ( )

Blah. Lost interest after a while. Not badly written, just sort of...boring.

This novel starts out slow, but it's well paced and creates a solid fictional world where it is easy to suspend one's disbelief long enough to accept that psychic mediums might actually be doing something more than parlor tricks. The switching back and forth between past and present was a bit confusing- this seems to be a very popular way to write a book anymore, but even in a book that is otherwise really good, this structure really does make the story harder to become immersed in. Had the sections in each location and time been longer, the result would have been a stronger book, because reading it would not require shifting gears every chapter or so. But, within the books I've read that do this sort of thing, this was one of the better ones I've read this year.

Sibyl is a practical woman, a spinster in a world before women's rights meant much, but still strong-minded enough to not alienate modern female readers. Her one 'weakness' is attending an annual seance, a comfort to her in her grief that she doesn't dare question too closely. Unfortunately events soon lead her to explore the true nature of psychic gifts. Her mother and sister, who died when the Titanic sank, seem to be actually communicating with Sibyl through a psychic medium, and maybe her mother can still offer guidance as to how Sibyl might help her wayward younger brother. ( )