A big thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Bantam for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. 

I promise I’ll get into the plot but I have to say this first. If there is not a restaurant named “Kabob’s Your Uncle” then this world is not complete. I spent a good couple of minutes laughing when I read it. 

Okay, into the plot we go! I did not realize this was the second book in a series. If it had featured more prominently on the cover, I would have read the first book first. She does mention she solved a murder before with Jamie, so you aren’t totally lost. But again, I don’t know what I’m missing but it does FEEL like I’m missing key information as I’m reading.

I really liked the integration of the tarot cards into how Katie thinks about herself and the people around here. I especially enjoyed the flashbacks with her Aunt Rosie explaining the major and minor Arcana cards. (We could all benefit from having an Aunt Rosie.) And the way she navigated the myths around reading tarot. I appreciated that it was based in reality and not “fortune telling”. 

The mystery and murder is baffling. Her best friend is arrested for killing the police officer that saved Katie’s life as an infant. There’s more than just a beloved neighborhood cop to the victim and Katie works to find out who really wanted Officer Pete dead. Trigger warning, there are themes that deal with sexual assault and sexual harassment that are key to the central story. They are not explicit, however you are the best judge of your tolerance for those subject matters. That said, I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I got immediately sucked in and blew through half of the book in a single afternoon. Katie True is engaging and not afraid to use dry sarcasm as a conversational weapon. I very much related to her as a main character. I feel like this is one people could easily underestimate. They shouldn’t. Highly recommend reading Tricks of Fortune when it’s available in early July!