Other Lady Vanishes

The Other Lady Vanishes- Amanda Quick
Berkley/Penguin Group
Release Date: May 8, 2018

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers!

Synopsis: After escaping from a private sanitarium, Adelaide Blake arrives in Burning Cove, California, desperate to start over.

Working at an herbal tea shop puts her on the radar of those who frequent the seaside resort town: Hollywood movers and shakers always in need of hangover cures and tonics. One such customer is Jake Truett, a recently widowed businessman in town for a therapeutic rest. But unbeknownst to Adelaide, his exhaustion is just a cover.

In Burning Cove, no one is who they seem. Behind facades of glamour and power hide drug dealers, gangsters, and grifters. Into this make-believe world comes psychic to the stars Madame Zolanda. Adelaide and Jake know better than to fall for her kind of con. But when the medium becomes a victim of her own dire prediction and is killed, they'll be drawn into a murky world of duplicity and misdirection.

Neither Adelaide or Jake can predict that in the shadowy underground they'll find connections to the woman Adelaide used to be--and uncover the specter of a killer who's been real all along...

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What would you do if you were locked up in an asylum by your husband so he could spend your inheritance and you could be used as a test subject by doctors?  If you're Adelaide Blake, you escape and head to the small town of Burning Cove to recreate your life.  Adelaide spends two months getting comfortable, making friends, and helping the small tea shop where she works do a booming business in herbal tea remedies for the Hollywood stars who come to Burning Cove to get away from it all.  Then things start getting complicated.  Adelaide's new neighbor, Jake Truett, shows an unusual interest in her, as does psychic to the stars Madame Zolanda. It's hard for Adelaide to know who she can trust, especially when people start dying at a suspiciously fast pace.  Adelaide and Jake must uncover the secret behind her time in the asylum, lies, deceit, and blackmail to stop a deadly drug ring- before they number among its victims.

Adelaide is a deceptively sweet and trusting character, with a delightful strength and real world experience that should appeal to readers from the beginning.  She may not think of herself as strong, but she saves herself from the asylum, creates a new life for herself, and doesn't allow past betrayals to keep her from developing new friendships.  Jake is more of a mysterious figure than Quick's usual hero, and while we know from the beginning that he's one of the good guys, it takes longer than usual to peel back his layers.  We discover him at the same time that Adelaide does, we raise the same questions and get the same surprises.  I enjoyed how, each time you thought you'd learned all there was about Jake, he sheepishly admits to one more surprise.  I especially loved the one about the fountain pen!

The Other Lady is a mystery full of surprises, from first to last.  The drug ring, the murders, betrayal and surprise assistance- Lady has them all.  Then just when you think you've got it all sorted out, you realize there is one final mystery: the mystery of the Other Lady. I enjoyed guessing, thinking I had it figured out, then discovering what the red herrings were and what small clues were bigger than they seemed.  Quick is at her best here, keeping the reader on their toes and immersed in the shadows and silvery glamor that is 1930s Burning Cove.

  

In Amanda Quick's first foray into the world of the 1930s, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Quick introduces us to the small town of Burning Cove, California. The Other Lady Vanishes expands our familiarity of the town, introduces new and colorful characters, and brings back some favorites from Girl.  You don't have to have read Girl to dive into Lady, but it does help you further enjoy some of the returning characters.  The Other Lady Vanishes is a great mystery, full of tricky twists and turns that keep you guessing until the last page.  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review