City of Shadows by Victoria Thompson

City of Shadows
by Victoria Thompson

ISBN-13: 9780593197530
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Berkley Books
Released: December 7th 2021

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Elizabeth Miles Bates has returned from her honeymoon cruise and is taking great pride in having completely forsaken her past life as a con artist. Then her friend, Anna Vanderslice, begs her to use her talents to help save her widowed mother from a disreputable medium. Since the war and the flu epidemic left so many families bereaved, interest in contacting the dead has experienced a revival. Once quite popular, séances have come back into vogue as desperate families mourn their loved ones and long to communicate with them.

Anna's mother has been attending séances in an attempt to contact her son, David, who died of influenza. Anna had thought it a harmless activity, though a heartbreaking one, but she has just learned that Mrs. Vanderslice is paying the medium large sums of money in her eagerness to make contact with her deceased son. Since David's death has caused Anna and her mother financial hardship already, Mrs. Vanderslice's obsession is in danger of ruining them.

Madame Ophelia is part of a group of con artists working together to fleece as many New Yorkers as possible before moving onto another city. Several of Mrs. Vanderslice's friends as well as some of Gideon's clients have already been victimized. Elizabeth knows that simply exposing the medium as a fraud will not be enough, and the only way to get at least some of the stolen money back is to con the medium and her cohorts. But will Elizabeth's family help her when it means betraying other con artists? So Elizabeth turns to her aunt, Cybil, and Cybil's partner, Zelda, for help. Although Cybil disapproves of her family's shady profession, she is happy to lend a hand. Can Elizabeth and her gang of amateurs fool the professionals?


My Review:
City of Shadows is a historical set in 1919 in New York City. This is the fifth book in the series. You don't need to read the previous books to understand this one, and this book didn't spoil the previous novels. The historical details were woven into the story to create a sense of the specific time and place as well as bring the story alive.

Elizabeth is a reformed con artist married to Gideon, an honorable lawyer who refuses to lie. Elizabeth and her family has learned how to use his honesty to help in their right-a-wrong cons, and Elizabeth's friends were more than happy to be a part of the fun. The reader isn't told the plans before they happen, so there's an element of mystery and suspense. But we see events as they happen and know the overall goal, so it's fun guessing how the cons are going to go. It was very entertaining and humorous to see each of the interconnected cons being pulled off.

There was no sex or bad language. Overall, I'd highly recommend this entertaining historical novel.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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