Ghosts of Gotham

4 Stars for the book, maybe 3 stars for the audiobook. I thought this was an entertaining read. I liked the writing style. I would recommend this to urban fantasy readers. I wasn't sure of my rating because even though I enjoyed the parts that I read, the parts that I listened to were not good. I didn't like this narrator at all. The voice she used for Maddie made me dislike her character. I finally stopped listening to it and read the rest. Much better. This was the first book that I have read by this author. I will definitely check out more of his work. I received a copy from Net Galley.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to 47North and NetGalley! Ghosts of Gotham is about Lionel Page, a journalist who makes a living out of exposing conmen and proving that there’s no such thing as miracles or magic. An expert skeptic, his life quickly takes a turn after a meeting with the mysterious Regina Dunkle who wants him to find a lost Edgar Allan Poe manuscript for her and verify its authenticity. In exchange, she offers to protect him and safeguard his secret. Lionel is then quickly thrust into a world he was not prepared for and in the process, he finds many secrets in his past won’t stay buried for long. I thought that Ghosts of Gotham was a pretty okay book. It definitely wasn’t what I expected and it does get kind of confusing but I did like it. I didn’t love it, but I liked it well enough. The characters are kind of okay although I felt like Lionel’s romance with Maddie was kind of forced and unnecessary. I could have done without it and it may have been a stronger book if the romance hadn’t felt so forced. Still, the author does a good job at portraying this character who’s completely unprepared for the kind of world he’s suddenly facing. I don’t buy that he learns so quickly but it does get kind of waved away by his parentage or something. The plot moves pretty quickly and it does diverge a bit from the finding the lost manuscript part, although everything gets tied together in the end with a neat solution. A little too neat for my taste personally but everything does get resolved. I’ll admit that certain parts were more interesting to me and I wished that they were explored further in the narrative. The twist it took was less interesting to me and while I liked it enough to finish it, it felt like there’s a lot of wasted potential there that I wished was explored further. Overall, I’d rate Ghosts of Gotham a three out of five stars. It had a good premise and kept me interested enough to read through the end but I can’t help but think of the wasted potential in plotlines that could have been explored further. Still, it’s a good urban fantasy which I can recommend to fans of the genre. This review is also on The Bookworm Daydreamer