Sleight – Review + GIVEAWAY

Once again, I’m thrilled to be on this book tour with Rockstar Book Tours! If you haven’t subscribed to their email list for tour signups, I highly encourage you to. They always host amazing books, and I’ve been introduced to some phenomenal books thanks to their tours. Click the photo above, or HERE to check out their site!

“The Cinzio Traveling Players, a well-oiled machine, has plans for all contingencies. Almost all. Delia falling three stories to her death was not among those plans.”

Genevieve Flannery grew up in the Cinzio Traveling Players circus. It’s the only life she’s ever known. Watching her best friends throw each other around in the sky, spending large amounts of time with elephants and lions, and playing the violin upside down from a length of silk is all normal for her. Even her mother being afflicted by visions doesn’t seem strange to her. Well, no stranger than the other secrets she and her mother keep.

But then everything changes.

Delia falls during one of their performances, doing a routine they’ve done countless times before. Suddenly, Gen finds herself following a mysterious trail left by her mother to recover an item that she doesn’t fully understand. Worse, the visions that assaulted her mother are now being seen by Genevieve. She has to solve the puzzle her mother left her without knowing who to trust. Including her own mind.

“It’s the creepiest feeling, that someone is watching you, even creepier when you know exactly what that something could be, and what it could do to you.”

Sleight is stunning and magical! Seriously, there is so much to love in this book. First, I adore the characters. Genevieve, the acrobatic twins, Ash and Viv, Baby, Henry, they all are well developed characters with personalities as big as the big top they work in. Each of them felt vivid and alive, and I would love to be friends with all of them. Even the villains are exactly the way I like them. Tragic, flawed, entirely despicable despite all the flawed tragicness. Especially surprise villain number two. That was a delicious twist!

Speaking of big personalities, wait until you meet Houdini. I don’t know how a baby elephant can come to life on the page, but Sommersby does exactly that. He’s one of my favorite characters in this book. He may actually BE my favorite! Every scene with him is delightful!

“I attempt to nudge him out of the way, but there is no nudging a five-hundred-pound baby elephant who is enamored with his own flailing trunk.”

There is something for everyone in this book! Danger, mystery, a touch of romance. It’s whimsical and funny but also has moments of intensity and heartbreak. I love the pace that everything unfolds. Even though Genevieve isn’t exactly a normal teenager, and hasn’t lived a normal life, the way she reacts to the events around her feel very typical and normal. Or as typical and normal as you’d expect anyway.

I really enjoyed how creative and unique this story was. Everything from being set in the circus, to the type of magic being used, to the history of the hidden item, and literally everything in between. It all felt so original and fresh! Sommersby does such a fantastic job with the details and intricacies of these characters and what circus life must feel like, you’d think she actually did grow up in a circus!

“But that’s the thing about growing up in a circus — if the bones aren’t sticking out or your flesh isn’t on fire, you’re pretty much expected to work.”

Sleight is the first in a series, though I’m not sure how many are planned. What I am sure about is that I intend on reading every single one! I need to know how Gen handles the next obstacles that come her way, and I have a feeling a certain villain isn’t going to be content letting her go. Actually, neither of them will. And I can’t wait to see more of their story develop.

In all, if you love magic in normal places, a unique story, feisty characters full of heart, and an action packed mystery with tons of twists and turns, you’ll fall in love with Sleight!

Thank you Rockstar Book Tours for including me on this tour! I am in love with this novel! Please be sure to check out more from this author, and pre-order the book. Links below. Keep scrolling for a chance to win a Sleight prize pack and check out the rest of the tour!

Title: SLEIGHT

Author: Jennifer Sommersby

Pub. Date: April 24, 2018

Publisher: Sky Pony Press

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Pages: 424

Find it: Amazon, B&N, iBooks, TBD, Goodreads

Delia smiles at the shadow only she sees—

Something slams into her. The lyra whirls like a half-dollar spinning on its edge.

My mother is thrown backward.

And she falls.

Growing up in the Cinzio Traveling Players Company, Genevieve Flannery is accustomed to a life most teenagers could never imagine: daily workouts of extravagant acrobatics; an extended family of clowns; wild animals for pets; and her mother, Delia, whose mind has always been tortured by visions—but whose love Geni never questions. In a world of performers who astonish and amaze on a daily basis, Delia’s ghostly hallucinations never seemed all that strange . . . until the evening Geni and her mother are performing an aerial routine they’ve done hundreds of times, and Delia falls to her death.

That night, a dark curtain in Geni’s life opens. Everything has changed.

Still reeling from the tragedy, the Cinzio Traveling Players are also adjusting to the circus’s new owner: a generous, mysterious man whose connection to the circus—Geni suspects—has a dark and dangerous history. And suddenly Geni is stumbling into a new reality of her own, her life interrupted daily by the terrors only Delia used to be able to see.

As the visions around her grow stronger, Geni isn’t sure who she can trust. Even worse, she’s starting to question whether she can trust her own mind.