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| About the Book |
SHED GIRL
BY MILANA MARSENICH
Genre: young adult fiction, (contemporary crime, romance)
Print length: 220 pages (72K words)
Age range: This book is suitable for adults and teenagers
Trigger warnings: young people in peril; abusive family and stranger relationships, loss of parents
Shed Girl is a contemporary crime novel set in the small fictional town of Annie’s Court on Washington’s northern coast.
Annie’s Court has a runaway problem. Runaways arrive and then they disappear. Juliet French, an old runaway herself, does tarot readings for petty cash at the Farmers Market. Across the market Tony LeCrosse sells toys. Juliet notices the runaways flock to LeCrosse. Just before they go missing.
After witnessing the abduction of a young boy, Detective Benson Picard solicits Juliet’s help. Already determined to find the boy, she agrees to Benson’s terms. Juliet, a strong female lead, feels the danger in the cards when Tony LeCrosse invites her to a party. He wants her to entertain his guests with tarot readings. Juliet balks at the word “entertain” but agrees anyway. When Kyle shows up at LeCrosse’s party, Juliet’s spine “turns to stardust and fairies rush in.” The two team-up to find the missing kids. But Kyle has secrets of his own.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Milana Marsenich lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs.
As a natural listener and a therapist, she has witnessed amazing generosity and courage in others. She first witnessed this in her hometown of Butte, Montana, a mining town with a rich history and the setting for Copper Sky, her first novel. Copper Sky was chosen as a 2018 Spur Award finalist for Best Western Historical Novel.
She has an M.Ed. in Mental Health Counseling from Montana State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. She has previously published in Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, The Polishing Stone, The Moronic Ox, BookGlow, and Feminist Studies. She has a short story included in The Montana Quarterly book: Montana, Warts and All. She has three published novels, Copper Sky, The Swan Keeper, and Beautiful Ghost, and one popular history book, Idaho Madams.
In addition to Copper Sky being a Spur Award finalist in 2018, The Swan Keeper was a Willa Award finalist in 2019, and her short story, Wild Dogs, won the Laura Award for short fiction in 2020. She is a member of Western Writers of America and of Women Writing the West.
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| My review |
An interesting concept and on the whole an interesting read. The main characters, Juliet and Kyle, were well drawn, both having their secrets, doubts and fears, but also being strong, likeable young adults.
Both Juliet and Kyle are almost 18 years old, both are runaways struggling through their own difficult lives and their equally as difficult past - both reluctant to open up and share their lives and their secrets, but both are more concerned about the children that arrive at the harbourside town of Annie's Court - and then promptly disappear.
Juliet lives in an old shed with a cat (who rather steals several scenes), Kyle lives in a tent in an area near the woods set aside for the shelter of runaway boys, but there is conflict between him and another of the older boys, a conflict which does affect him, but his feelings for Juliet are growing, feelings which are mutual so does it matter that he has to leave the safety of the tents?
Kyle has a job washing dishes, Juliet augments her meagre finances by doing tarot readings at the local market, until one day the toymaker who also has a stall there invites her to a party to entertain his guests with her readings. She accepts for there is suspicion about Tony LeCrosse - children are drawn to his toys and then they disappear. Juliet, working undercover for a local policeman, and assisted by Kyle, is determined to find and rescue the missing children.
I enjoyed the read, I wanted to find out what happened to the children and I liked Juliet and Kyle, but there were a couple of things which very slightly niggled. The main one was that this is a very American book - no problem for American readers, but for this Brit some of the wording was baffling, along with the Americanisms (gotten, for instance) but that is my problem, not the author's!
Some of the scenes and action I found a little hard to believe, the two lead characters did all the work while the policeman only popped up now and then. One big problem I had: Juliet had a cell phone (mobile in the UK) - how did she charge the thing up? She had a small tape recorder as well: ditto how did she work the thing? Batteries? How could she afford batteries?
I wasn't convinced by her repeated visits to LeCrosse's parties, putting herself in danger without proper police backup and some information was repeated too much - both Juliet and Kyle's backgrounds for instance, and the repeated disappearances then re-appearances of the young girl (no spoilers!)
Maybe the cover is a little too 'busy'? Less is more would be the brief here - the hand holding the tarot cards is perfect, but the background confuses the issue and somewhat obliterates the text.
However, this was a good read and I enjoyed the information about Juliet's tarot readings, these were excellently done. The main characters have great potential for further novels.
**** 4 stars
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