The Deception: A Novel

By Kim Taylor Blakemore

Slippery otherworldly intensity.

This third darkly fun novel, DECEPTION, from Kim Taylor Blakemore is another sensory soup of sounds, sensations, and secrets.

Here we are immersed in a world of mediums—some hacks, others the real thing. Our main protag Clementine is clever, relentless, and full of tricks and technical genius. She knows how to manipulate emotions, especially those who long for contact with deceased loved ones. Enter Maud, a true medium, who struggles to bring back and understand the voices in her head. She’s a marketer’s dream and Clem is eager to take full advantage, roping in a familiar partner Russell to help create fake seances.

The contest between Maud’s paranormal reality and Clem’s fraud becomes tense—I wasn’t not sure who to root for!—for even though Clem will stop at nothing to be successful, she’s sympathetic, for her past was rough, and Maud’s desire for truth is heartrending. With a setting of ever-present rain, cold, mud, slipping and sliding, the author has added otherworldly intensity to the scenes—just enough discomfort to keep me on edge.

This is a novel that elegantly laces deep research of mediumship in the 19th century into an absorbing tale.