I received a copy of “Spectacle” by Jodie Lynn Zdrok from my librarian before the official publication date.
Spectacle is the exact kind of book I thought I would love. Set in the past, 1800s France, it’s a murder mystery with a dash of magic; my three favorite genres all rolled into one. However, everything about the book fell flat to me. Nothing was particularly bad about it, but there was nothing overly exciting about it either.
Nathalie Baudin isn’t your typical French teenager. In her past time, she dresses as a boy and writes articles for the city paper. But she isn’t writing any old articles, no. Nathalie gets landed with the job of visiting the morgue and writing about all of the dead bodies that turn up there for the public to view. It is during one of these viewings that Nathalie first realizes that she is more than just a girl with big dreams; she has magic.
Maybe magic isn’t the best word to use, but when Nathalie touches the glass pane of one of the morgue’s newest displays, a young girl who had been viciously murdered, Nathalie finds herself reliving that dead girl’s last memories, the memories of her murder. From there on, the book spirals into multiple different directions, one following the murders and the culprit, the other in discovering more about her powers.
My biggest issue with the book was how slow it was. Nothing really seemed to happen…ever. Not until the very end and even that was short-lived. The end itself was disappointing to say in the least. I didn’t predict the murderer, but that was because I was given no clue as to who the murderer could be. In my opinion, to write a good mystery novel, you have to give the reader the chance of guessing it right. There wasn’t even that chance in “Spectacle”.
Another issue I had was the characters. I didn’t care for a single one of them. There wasn’t really much to any one character. They were all like cardboard cut-outs; flat, one dimensional, and overall, useless. I hate feeling this way about characters because the people in the book are what I love the most, its why I read. To have a book where not a single one of them meant anything to me at all was sad.
The idea of the book is brilliant, however. It’s not that I disliked the book, more than it wasn’t anything special. There was no life to the book. It was just words on paper. You can’t really dislike or like words on paper.
If you want a more detailed review of the book that contains spoilers, keep reading below!
Beware! Spoilers ahead!
The first chapter or so seemed so promising, but the result was highly disappointing.
It was obvious enough, to me at least, that this novel was a play on the Jack the Ripper killings, which took place in the same time period, with similar victims, and a similar description of the killer, but in Paris, France instead of London. I am a sucker for Jack the Ripper novels, so this only pulled my intrigue even more.
However, things started to go wrong somewhere along the way.
It got boring. For a good chunk of chapters, nothing really happened. Nathalie wrote some letters to her friend, she talked to her other friend and her mom, she talked to her boss, she talked to the police officer at the morgue (are you seeing a pattern here?), and she did a lot of thinking. Most of this was just her trying to decide whether or not she should continue to go to the morgue or not and what her powers really meant.
It’s hard to write about this book in a coherent way because there was so little coherence in the novel itself. It felt like there were two different stories going on that barely connected themselves in the end. Both stories revolved around Nathalie, but other than that, they were scarcely related.
Usually, when a plot isn’t the greatest, the characters will save a book for me. However, the characters in “Spectacle” weren’t any better than the plot was.
I had no real attachment to any one character. I didn’t really care what happened to them. This doesn’t happen often with me and books. There is generally at least one character I will like, even if they are only mentioned once and never again. Yet, this was not the case.
There wasn’t much to the main character. Nathalie had no interesting qualities or traits, nothing different about her personality or her morals that made her an intriguing character. Even though she had a really amazing power that would have been cool to see in a better character, she wasn’t all that interesting.
All the other side characters were the same. I was trying to care about these characters, but I really didn’t. I’m generally a sucker for the main character’s kind and gentle best friend, but I don’t think I even stopped to be shocked or upset when she was murdered. It was a kind of apathy that was strange to me.
This is the same for the love interest. Love interests in stories like these are generally my favorite and this one should have been no different, but it was. I am not sure what it was exactly that set me off so much with all of these characters, but something did.
When it comes to the conclusions of the two plots in the book, this is where I was disappointed the most.
The lesser of the two plots was the source of Nathalie’s powers. At first, Nathalie doesn’t do much in terms of finding out where her magic comes from, and I wish it would have stayed that way.
We learn that there was a scientist many years before Nathalie was born who did experiments on people, accidentally giving them powers. These people with their new powers and the doctor were ostracized by society. So, the patients who didn’t come out right away about their newfound abilities went into hiding, covering up their skills and talents so as not to be found out.
It seemed like this would mean that there would be very few of these people living in the same area, yet we learn that Nathalie isn’t the only one we met in the book with powers. In fact, four people she knew had them as well. Her aunt in the asylum, her boss at the journaling company, and both her parents went through this testing and came out on the other side with abilities. If my memory serves me right, the only reason Nathalie has powers at all is that both of her parents do.
Something about this didn’t sit right with me. It seemed too coincidental that so many people in her life were similar, that they all had these powers and knew about hers without telling her. The story of her powers felt incomplete, but not in the way that intrigues one to keep reading the later books. It left me dissatisfied.
The dissatisfaction ran deeper when the end of the murder-arc came around.
Nathalie runs into the murderer in the catacombs below Paris (the catacombs which held a whole backstory between Nathalie and her father that didn’t really make sense nor seem relevant). This part was probably my favorite part because it finally felt like something was actually happening. After the fiasco in the catacombs, I was hoping the book would pick up. However, I knew it wouldn’t because it was too close to the end of the book.
The next thing we read about the killer is that he has been killed and thrown in the River Seine like each of his victims. While interesting, if all of this had done so much earlier in the book and if the ending we got was much more flushed out, I don’t think it would have felt so bland as it was.
Even after the body of the now identified killer had been taken to the morgue, I was expecting it to be revealed that the man who had died wasn’t really the killer and that he was really still at large.
Alas, no such revelation.
Nothing felt complete. Nothing felt wrapped up. Things still seemed up in the air and loosey-goosey.
The middle felt slow and the end felt rushed.
Like I said before, it isn’t as if I hated to book. I simply have a general apathy toward it, which is almost worse.
***
Hey, howdy, ho!
I just want to remind you all that these are my opinions on the book, nothing more. This is not hatred for the author nor anyone else involved in its publishing.
If you felt differently about the book, please let me know! I would love to hear all opinions, whether they’re in agreement on completely contradictory.
Wishing you all love and joy and a happy new year!
Caroline Noelle
Isaiah 1.17
