Nocturnal Book Reviews

Velvet was my first forage in Mary Hooper's writing and it won't be the last. I found this book very charming.

We forget sometimes how much more naive the Victorians were comparing to us, and Miss Hooper shows this naivete in stark contrast with deviousness of the main villains very very well. She also draws our attention to the hardships of simple folks lives, shows how thin the line between abject poverty and having basic needs met really was.

Kitty grows with a cruel gambler of a father, and when he drowns in Thames while chasing her in a state of extreme inebriation, she runs away from home, changes her name to Velvet and manages to secure position in public laundry.

The work is really hard and most girls don't last longer than two years before fallen ill with consumption, but Velvet acquires her own client, a famous medium Madam Savoya, who ends up asking the girl to work exclusively for her as a sort of private maid/companion/assistant.

Wide-eyed, naive and believing in everything she sees, Velvet slowly gets more and more involved with the world of medium rivalry, late night seances and glittering private sessions, only the more Madam asks of her the more the girl starts questioning the true motives behind her employer's actions. Do spirits really guide her or is Madam just another clever charlatan?

The book is eery and intense, and the atmosphere is kind of sucks you in. The more you see the scope of Madam's scams the scarier they get, until you want to just shake poor Velvet and scream some sense in her...

I really recommend this book to any lover of historical YA, especially fans of The Agency series by Y.S.Lee.