Review by Booklist Review
Set against the backdrop of Jazz Age New York on the threshold of WWII, this is a relentless tale of love and the consequences of trying to fight destiny. Phyllis LeBlanc, née Green, hasn't done a job for mob boss Russian Vic in seven months, and now he's sent one right to her doorstep. Phyllis has uncanny hands and has killed for him before, always under the pretense of justice. The threads of her relationships--the working one with Vic, a dormant romance, friendships--unravel and reform as she learns the truth and tries to extricate herself from a bad situation. She isn't the only one with the powerful hands, though. The problem is that Phyllis herself may be done with killing, but the hands aren't. Johnson (Love is the Drug, 2014) skillfully hammers home how little uncanny power does in the face of systemic oppression when a white person can get away with anything as long as the victim isn't white. That's not to say this is an entirely grim novel; there includes hope, fierce passion, and a powerful romance.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This sumptuous fantasy from Johnson (Love is the Drug) splits focus between three uncannily gifted characters as they struggle against their fates and the pervasive racism of America on the cusp of WWII. Phyllis LeBlank is mixed-race but passes for white to mingle with New York City's mobsters, using her supernatural knife throwing skills to kill people her boss assures her are worthy of death. But when Phyllis reunites with her ex-boyfriend, half-Indian police informant Dev Patil, she questions her line of work. Dev, who can foretell threats against anyone he touches, and Phyllis flee the mob to Dev's childhood home upstate. There, the couple become enmeshed in the disagreement between a white family and an erratic young black man with powers of his own. As racial tensions explode into violence, Phyllis discovers she's pregnant and Dev gets drafted into war. Phyllis's best friend, clairvoyant Tamara, helps Phyllis through her difficult pregnancy with a fetus capable of sending visions of the future. But Tamara's own visions lead her to a challenging choice. With a sweeping but overstuffed plot, dynamic characters, and style to spare, this alternate history demands the reader's full attention. Fans of challenging, diverse fantasy will enjoy this literary firecracker. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The fates of three people intertwine in a World War II--era New York where some people of color are blessed and cursed with magic in their hands. Phyllis, a light-skinned African American woman who can "pass" under many circumstances, has impossibly dexterous hands that wield murderous knives in the service of Victor, a Russian mob boss, and believes her kills serve justice. Her once and future lover, Dev, a half-Indian undercover cop posing as Victor's bartender, whose own hands can sense threats to himself and others, can't quite reconcile his feelings for Phyllis with his duty to a department that will never truly accept him as one of them. And Phyllis' best friend, Tamara, an African American snake dancer and aspiring impresario at Victor's club, with an oracular gift of reading cards, hopes that if she pretends she doesn't notice the violent foundation of Victor's empire, it won't touch her. But the truths that each refuses to acknowledge and the death-haunted pasts that refuse to stay buried have dangerous implications for all three of them, both on the streets of New York City and in the supposedly quiet Hudson Valley town where Dev, Phyllis, and Tamara take an uncertain refuge. Johnson's secret history is a nuanced portrait of racism in all of its poisonous flavors, brutally overt and unsuccessfully covert. She explores in deeper detail an issue she touched upon in her two YA novels, The Summer Prince (2013) and Love Is the Drug (2014): the incredibly fraught, liminal space of being a light-skinned person of color. In musical prose, she also offers passionate and painful depictions of the love expressed in romance and friendship and the sacrifices such love can demand. A sad, lovely, and blood-soaked song of a book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
