Blog Tour: Sensational

Sensational

(Spectacle #2)

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

Publisher: Tor Teen

Release Date: February 11, 2020

Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction

Synopsis:

Jodie Lynn Zdrok’s Sensational is the thrilling follow-up to Spectacle in which a killer haunts the Paris World’s Fair of 1889.

The 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris is full of innovations, cultural displays, and inventions. Millions of visitors attend over the course of several months…so no one would notice if a few were missing, right? Maybe—but someone is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the guillotine with a display of their own: beheaded victims in some of the Exposition’s most popular exhibits.

Nathalie Baudin’s ability to see murder scenes should help, but she’s suffering the effects of her magic more than ever before. Fortunately she has other Insightfuls to team up with—if they can be trusted.

Book 1 Info

Spectacle (#1)

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

Publisher: Tor Teen

Release Date: February 12, 2019

Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction

A YA murder mystery in which a young reporter must use her supernatural visions to help track down a killer targeting the young women of Paris.

Paris, 1887.

Sixteen-year-old Nathalie Baudin writes the daily morgue column for Le Petit Journal. Her job is to summarize each day’s new arrivals, a task she finds both fascinating and routine. That is, until the day she has a vision of the newest body, a young woman, being murdered–from the perspective of the murderer himself.

When the body of another woman is retrieved from the Seine days later, Paris begins to buzz with rumors that this victim may not be the last. Nathalie’s search for answers sends her down a long, twisty road involving her mentally ill aunt, a brilliant but deluded scientist, and eventually into the Parisian Catacombs. As the killer continues to haunt the streets of Paris, it becomes clear that Nathalie’s strange new ability may make her the only one who can discover the killer’s identity–and she’ll have to do it before she becomes a target herself.

My Thoughts

This is the second book in a duology that follows our main character Nathalie. Nathalie inherited her power from her father and it manifests itself when she touches a body or glass infant of one so she can determine if they were murdered or not.  Her power works as a vision from the killers perspective right before the victim dies.  This book follows Nathalie and her friends as she tries to find the killer who is beheading his victims in the fashion of the French Revolution including using a guillotine.  The victims were all found around The World’s Fair that was taking place in Paris in 1889 and intooduced the Eiffel Tower.

I really enjoyed the story of Nathalie and her friends. I also thought the premise of how the blood magic worked.  I found it unique and interesting. I also loved the setting, Paris is one of my favorite cities in the world and I loved following around these characters.  I think it would have been so cool to experience the world exposition in Paris at that time.  The Eiffel Tower was completed for this exposition and I enjoyed reading more about it.  Every time the author mentioned something interesting I found myself going to down the rabbit hole of google to learn more about them.  I never knew that the morgue was a tour destination at this time and that people would line up all day just to see the bodies they had on display.  I also learned that vin de coca was wine laced with cocain and this led to the making of coke-a-cola. I love when a book can teach me things I didn’t already know.

What I didn’t like about the book was that the author would intermix French terms and phrases and at times I found this to be distracting.  A lot of them were common phrases but a few I had never heard before and had to look them up.  I was also disappointed by the ending of this book, I felt that it rushed the ending of the characters after figuring out the mystery.  I wanted a little more for the characters that I had come to know while reading their story.  Overall this was still a fun read and if you like your history with a little bit of magic then this is a great pick!

BOOK LINKS

• Goodreads: https://fantasticflyingbookclub.blogspot.com/2020/03/tour-schedule-sensational-spectacle-2.html
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765399717?tag=macmillan-20
• Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sensational-jodie-lynn-zdrok/1131555808?ean=9780765399717
• Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Sensational-Jodie-Lynn-Zdrok/9780765399717?ref=grid-view&qid=1583322493180&sr=1-1
• Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sensational-1
• iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/sensational/id1464539352
• IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780765399717

TOUR SCHEDULE

Blog tour schedule link: https://fantasticflyingbookclub.blogspot.com/2020/03/tour-schedule-sensational-spectacle-2.html

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jodie Lynn Zdrok holds two MAs in European History and an MBA. She enjoys rooting for Boston sports teams, traveling, doing races (to offset being a foodie), and posting cat photos to Instagram. She works in technology and lives in North Carolina by way of Massachusetts.