Iron Cast - A Review

If your greatest joys and fears could be realized with a couple of notes of song, a blast from a trumpet, or a couple of lines of a poem, would you take advantage of it?  Hemopaths are wanted in Boston for their ability to charm, trick, and persuade with their arts.  Ada and Corrine live under the safety of The Cast Iron, an exclusive club that offers these services in the way of performances a couple of nights a week for the elite upper crust. The problem is that the use of hemopathy has been outlawed, and Ada and Corrine just upped the stakes with a con job that put more eyes on the hemopaths living in the city.  When things start to go dirty all they may be able to rely on is each other.

​I started this book with high hopes.  About 60% of the way in I became resigned to the fact that it just might not happen for me.  While the writing breathed life into the start of what we would come to know as the roaring twenties and the time of prohibition (the book takes place in 1919), that's all the beginning of the book really has to offer: detailed histories and character development. 

BUT
Don't despair ladies and gentlemen

~This book delivers~

• I was slightly concerned about a lot of slang.  That was one of the things I hated about Libba Bray's The Diviners (I love her, I just didn't like the book).  I shouldn't have been worried.  The book takes place right before the big flapper era, and dodges a lot of the typical stereotypes this period brings to YA fiction.
• Ada and Corrine are refreshing.  It's at a point in YA where a lot of female friends don't feel very realistic or familiar.  This feels like a real friendship.  And it's awesome.  They're also pretty badass.
• The settings (bars, clubs, homes, hotels) are very period authentic.  It was nice to read something that put you in the time and place that they were supposed to be in.
• Supporting characters were strong.  Everyone had their own personality and didn't blend into one another.
• The ROMANCES.  Thank you!  The love interest developments were a nice touch.  Not too fast and not too slow. It also didn't feel like "Oh, look, another couple getting together".
• Although the beginning is a little slow, it's worth holding out for the ending.  It wraps you in that frenzied song of a thriller and holds on until the very end.  

If you enjoy historical reads, fantasy, or paranormal thrillers, I would definitely put this on your to be read list (before someone sings you into doing it, of course).  

This book comes out October 11, 2016.

(I received an ARC from the publisher for an honest review)