ARC Review: The Second Death of Edie and Violet Bond by Amanda Glaze

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Second Death of Edie and Violet Bond by Amanda Glaze
Published by Union Square Co. on October 4, 2022
Genres: YA Historical Fiction, YA Paranormal
Pages: 368
Source: the publisher
Format: ARC
My Rating:
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Blurb:

Deliciously chilling and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful.”
—Nina LaCour, Printz Award–winning author of We Are Okay
 
Sacramento, 1885  
Edie and Violet Bond know the truth about death. The seventeen-year-old twins are powerful mediums, just like their mother—Violet can open the veil between life and death, and Edie can cross into the spirit world. But their abilities couldn’t save them when their mother died and their father threatened to commit them to a notorious asylum.   
 
Now runaways, Edie and Violet are part of a traveling Spiritualist show, a tight-knit group of young women who demonstrate their real talents under the guise of communing with spirits. Each night, actresses, poets, musicians, and orators all make contact with spirits who happen to have something to say. . . notions that young ladies could never openly express. But when Violet’s act goes terribly wrong one night, Edie learns that the dark spirit responsible for their mother’s death has crossed into the land of the living. As they investigate the identity of her mysterious final client, they realize that someone is hunting mediums…and they may be next.Only by trusting in one another can the twins uncover a killer who will stop at nothing to cheat death.

My Review

I’ve been intrigued with Edie and Violet Bond as they are real people and there have been at least one other if not more books about them. I loved that the author is actually related to them. I didn’t realize exactly how much historical types of issues would be in the story, but I liked how they really filled out to make it more than just a ghost story.

Right away I was hooked by the whole medium tour and knowing that while they may actually have real powers, they mostly used more of fakery things because that is what people expected. I loved how the time period came into play so much. Women being put into asylums because the men in their life, fathers, husbands, etc., could easily just say they were being hysterical if they didn’t want or like what they were doing. It was more than that. There was a character who was working on getting women accepted into schools/colleges that the weren’t in the past. And overall there was the mystery of who was kidnapping or why were so many other mediums disappearing.

The way it played out was well laid out by the author and kept me wondering exactly what was happening. The descriptions of the death or in-between area that the spirits were was also interesting and a bit of a different take than you might see in other stories.

A great historical fiction/paranormal YA story that I will be sharing with my students in my school library.