YA Book Review: Iron Cast by Destiny Soria

Title: Iron Cast

Author: Destiny Soria

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fantasy 

Publisher: Amulet Books

Pub Date: October 11, 2016

Pages: 384

My Copy: Courtesy of NetGalley and Amulet Books-Abrams

Book Summary:

It’s Boston, 1919, and the Cast Iron club is packed. On stage, hemopaths—whose "afflicted" blood gives them the ability to create illusions through art—captivate their audience. Corinne and Ada have been best friends ever since infamous gangster Johnny Dervish recruited them into his circle. By night they perform for Johnny’s crowds, and by day they con Boston’s elite. When a job goes wrong and Ada is imprisoned, they realize how precarious their position is. After she escapes, two of the Cast Iron’s hires are shot, and Johnny disappears. With the law closing in, Corinne and Ada are forced to hunt for answers, even as betrayal faces them at every turn.

Book Review:

An interesting take on historical fiction. i totally found myself liking Corrine and Ada, and the supporting characters like Johnny and Gabriel as well, and the other ones as well. They are both living in a world that you come to understand is changing for people with abilities, hemopaths-people who cause illusions or do something else like Saint. Each homeopath is different.

Corrine and Ada are our heroines. We are in a time when both young women are working at a club called the Cast Iron where they work as performers, but then things happen because of their side jobs and politics and the world changing around them. Their might be laws that will make alcohol and using or even being a hemopath, illegal. We know what they do to hemopaths. because Ada describes as it being horrible and we get a small taste of what happens in the places that Ada went to because of some supposed crime and that a certain someone ratted on her.

We learn that every hemopath. is different with their abilities. So their abilities are different and can be used in very interesting ways depending on what they need and want to do. The Cast Iron is where Corrine and Ada work along with the other people. Their boss is Johnny Dervish, a gangster of some note in Boston. He runs a club that serves alcohol and offers some entertainment as well. Corrine and Ada at times have gotten in some trouble from time to time because of the side jobs they have done on Johnny’s orders. Corrine and Ada also have two very different backgrounds, yet are very good friends. Corrine comes from a family with very high political connections. Ada tends to come from a poorer background. Then comes Gabriel Stone, who is a very interesting character for a lot of different reasons. I think Gabriel is the kind of guy who does what he needs to do for his own benefit.

This book takes lots of twists and turns as we learn that after Johnny Dervish’s supposed murder things get more twisted. There are a lot of things that our characters never knew about their boss and how Johnny manipulated them into doing the jobs, only to be arrested. Saint was one of these people who managed to get away because he snitched on Ada and Ada had to be in Haversham, which is not a nice place at all. They experiment on their kind.

I like how every character has a stake and that everybody has a motivation for doing the things that they do. It turns into every character needing to protect themselves and their loved ones. The turns and twists were definitely not what I expected. I like that this book took me on a journey with these characters. We also learn that certain doctors want to learn what makes hemopaths, abilities work and how they are trying to use this information to enhance the rest of the human race or so they say. We also learn that Boston is becoming unsafe for their kind.

We learn that nothing is ever what it seems like in this world. I like how we think one thing and then a certain person seems to get resurrected. As readers, we get a lot of answers and then find out something that we were not expecting. This book had a lot of exciting moment and a really big twist at the end that made this book very good at least in my opinion.

Rating:

4 Hearts