"A turn in the tale is not the end." - Chapter Nineteen

Iron Cast made my heart ache for the potent brew of true friendship. It filled me up, patted me down for spare emotions, and set me down gently. I have a feeling Ada and Corinne will be with me for a while.

Living in Boston myself, I enjoyed being able to picture the landmarks of 1919 Boston, smoke unfurling from parted lips and sidewalk gratings as my daring new friends Ada and Corinne led me through their colorful, dangerous adventures.

This book is for the outcasts. Welcome to the Cast Iron. ( )

I loved this book so much. It had a strong female friendship, diverse characters, a twisty as hell plot, an interesting magic system, and it all takes place in an alternate history jazz age!

Cons: There's no sequel? Also, Corinne and Ada were woefully naive at times though thankfully they seemed to be so separately and thus could keep each other in check.

But overall, a fantastic book. I would have read this in one sitting if life had allowed. I fell in world with this world Soria created, taking the bones of pre-Prohibition U.S. and adding in the idea that there are people who can do magic, but that magic is outlawed. Instead of speakeasies, there are underground clubs where regs come to be enspelled by hemopaths - who can create illusions, invoke emotions, and do even more using the power of their voice, music, or artistic skills.

The plot was so twisty and interesting! Hemopaths, if found using their powers, get carted off to a "safe house" that is one of those "you check in but don't check out" sort of places. There's bootlegging, and cons, and political corruption, and family dynamics. And woven throughout are strong friendships based on trust and respect. Corinne and Ada are wonderful, and I loved them both.

And that ending! That glorious twist of an ending! I swoon. ( )

If you're at all into creepy evil asylums, sneaky ensemble con jobs, or excellent female friendships, this book might be the perfect fit. Neatly plotted with wonderful characters and a fantastic magic system, it was a great read. The world-building is vivid and the story has plenty of twists, so even if you see where a few are going, there's bound to be one or two that you guess incorrectly. It also has a few genuinely dark and spooky moments that I didn't see coming, making it a great read for Halloween! ( )

The beginning of the book was slower going, I liked the concept and the overall story was good and the ending of the book tied everything together, but some parts felt quite tedious and overplayed. ( )

Overall just disappointed with this read. I fell in love with the book and the premise (alternate version of Boston in 1919 with a class of human beings called hemopaths being outlawed). However, the author chose to dump us right in the middle of the story instead of developing the characters we were supposed to care about. It also didn't help the world building didn't make a lot of sense. She threw in real life events such as Prohibition, but I honestly didn't feel like the author did a lot of research on Boston or Prohibition, let alone race relations back in the 1919s.

I honestly don't know how to explain this because the book starts off at a weird place with no explanation to things.

"Iron Cast" deals with two roommates and best friends Corinne and Ada who live at the Cast Iron club (no I don't know why the book title just didn't call it the name of the club) who pull jobs to keep the club afloat when they are not also singing/rhyming and playing music at the club for people who want to sit and be dazzled by the illusions the hemopaths can project onto regs (regular people). Hemopaths have a sensitivity to iron and the Cast Iron is iron free so Corinne and Ada can live there with no pain unlike elsewhere in Boston.

Ada is still recovering from being locked away for two weeks at an asylum for hemopaths and Corinne is pretty insensitive with wanting her to get over it already and make up with their friend Saint who turned Ada over. Pretty much the whole book can be summarized that Corinne says or does something insensitive, barely apologizes, and then gets in even more trouble ten minutes ago.

I liked Ada's backstory the most. Frankly I was more interested in her parents. One is African and the other is Portuguese. What doesn't make a lot of sense though is that Ada chooses to live at the club. She can still pull jobs and work there, but she can live with her mother. There is honestly a lot of nonsense with Ada and a guy she's seeing and her being afraid to tell him that she loves him because of reasons (seriously it was stupid and I refuse to dwell on it). We get some sloppy side story about why Ada and Corinne are friends, but it really doesn't work. Corinne moved into Ada's room when she started to manifest her hemopathy and acted like a stuck up jerk and was nasty to her. And then someone said a racial slur to Ada and Corinne demands an apology and they are just friends from that moment on.

Corinne is the daughter of a rich family in Boston. She's a jerk. Seriously. She has contempt toward her older brother for marrying a family of means and she thinks he is using that as a stepping stone to get into office where he will be prosecuting hemopaths. Once again it doesn't make a lot of sense that Corinne is at the club working and avoiding private school.

Frankly I have a hard time with two teenagers doing what they did throughout this book without getting smacked by an adult here and there. It just felt so unrealistic. If they had aged them both up to new adult age maybe this would have worked better. Both at one point they are running around and threatening and questioning people who are older, have money, etc. and I just laughed.

There are side characters in this book who don't fare well either with regards to development. I know the character Saint feels bad about rolling over on Ada, paints, and is gay.

Ada's love interest Charlie plays the horn and loves Ada.

Corinne's brother and mother are in more scenes with her, but her father is faceless throughout this book. A love interest of Corinne was annoying to the point that I wanted to smack the guy, he's 18 and running around with a gun.

And the club owner, Johnny Dervish, I think was supposed to be some type of Professor X person, but doesn't seem to be there besides to give a look or say something I think is supposed to be profound.

The writing was not good throughout the book. I think the bigger issue is that the author spent too much time on Corinne and Ada solo. I still don't get why they are best friends. Besides the weird finger tapping thing they did (and there's no explanation for that either by the way) I didn't get best friends forever. We kept having complete stand alone plots both of them were doing and nothing really works. Most of the story is supposed to be them figuring out who is out to get them and other hemopaths in the story after someone they love is killed. However, we have Ada forcing Corinne to return home for family events in order to not have her family get suspicious about what she is doing. Ada goes to see her mother and gets into arguments, goes to see Charlie, gets into arguments, etc.

Also for a book taking place in the 1900s, the dialogue seemed way too modern at times. I don't need it to be "The Great Gatsby" or anything, but there should have been some reference to things besides just Prohibition about to happen.

The flow was pretty terrible because the book jumps back and forth between the girls doing random things, investigating, and then doing random things again. When the not dynamic duo is eventually taken to the asylum something occurs that makes me roll my eyes so hard I couldn't get over it. This whole book was a lot of show with no tell happening.

The world building was poorly done. Something could have worked here if maybe the author chose to build up the backstory to the characters first. Or heck, she could have started the first scene with the girls pulling a scam in order to see how Ada ended up incarcerated in the first place. Instead we had a lot of things referred or alluded to. I also have to say I wonder if the author has done any research on Boston during the 1900s. Cause really besides her describing clothes and hair bands here and there, nothing else worked at all.

We do have a throwaway line here and there about racism in Boston when the story drifts back to Ada. However, for the most part, her race seemed to be ignored unless a scene called for it (when the two girls escape into a shop and the store owner threatens to call the police if Ada doesn't leave).

The ending was nonsensical. I can only hope that because of the way the book ended there is not a sequel happening here. I know the rule seems to be all YA books are a trilogy, but this one really doesn't need to be one. ( )