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Summary
Summary
Ten years ago, Cat's volatile mother, Mary, left her at her grandmother's house with nothing but a deck of tarot cards. Now seventeen, Cat is determined to make her life as different from Mary's as possible. When Cat's grandmother dies, she's forced to move to New Orleans with her mother. There, she discovers a picture of Mary holding a baby that's not her, leading her to unravel a dark family history and challenge her belief that Mary's mental health issues are the root of all their problems. But as Cat explores the reasons for her mother's breakdown, she fears she is experiencing her own. Ever since she arrived in New Orleans, she's been haunted by strangely familiar visitors--in dreams and on the streets of the French Quarter--who know more than they should. Unsure if she can rebuild her relationship with her mother, Cat is realizing she must confront her past, her future, and herself in the fight to try.
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Plagued by dreams and strange visitors linked to a tarot deck, Cat tries to uncover her mentally ill mother's secrets. Cat's lived with Moony, her maternal grandmother, since her mother, Mary, dropped her off at age 7 with a secret deck of tarot cards. Ten years later, Moony's death brings estranged Mary back into Cat's life; she relocates her daughter from Moony's small Louisiana town to New Orleans, where she works as a tarot reader in the French Quarter. Mary's severe bipolar disorder has hurt Cat deeply in the past and is depicted in painful, no-holds-barred details. Cat worries about her own sanity, knowing the disease's genetic component--and because she's haunted by people resembling the figures from the tarot deck both in dreams and, sometimes, on the streets of New Orleans. With the help of Daniel, her handsome love interest, Cat seeks answers about the people she's seeing and the inciting trauma that triggered Mary's illness. She finds far more than she bargained for, learning about old family secrets and devastating crimes and tragedies that her mother survived. The discoveries are well paced, the setting enchanting. Cat, Mary, and Moony are painted as complex characters caught in a complicated dynamic; their believability anchors the otherworldly elements and provides emotional weight to the stakes and resolution. Cat and her family are White; Daniel is a multiethnic Black boy. An enthralling dive into trauma, mental health, and mother-daughter relationships. (author's note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
After Cat's grandmother dies, she has no choice but to go live with her estranged and unreliable mother in New Orleans. As Cat tries to understand her mother's bipolar disorder and how her history may have triggered it, she begins to worry that she, too, might be mentally ill. Morgyn (Resurrection Girls, 2019) draws readers in with an explosive start and then leads them deeper into the nuances of Cat's familial history with a tale whose creeping pace builds to a crescendo. Morgyn's haunting and unsettling story features a narrator with an observant voice and is told in alluring prose (though it includes a slur for Romani people). With questions about the nature of mental illness, the validity of fortune-telling, and what our interpretations of our fortunes say about us, this blends a difficult mother-daughter relationship with an atmospheric setting and a mystery touched by the ambiguously supernatural. Jellicoe Road (2008) meets Imaginary Girls (2011) in this sophomore novel for readers who enjoy stories with a strong sense of place.
