Review: The Celtic Knot – Shannon MacLeod

Posted July 7, 2013 by Cocktails and Books in Reviews / 0 Comments

15827931Sometimes, love lasts lifetimes.

Lily has her whole life planned out; she’ll live if not happily, then at least ever after. Working as an insurance agent with her college sweetheart and longtime boyfriend, Lucas, she’ll eventually marry him and together they’ll take over the family agency. Then she and Lucas will start raising little insurance agents of their own. But something is missing…

At her best friend’s urging, she decides to do one last wild thing before committing her life to a future of policy endorsements–she takes a part time job reading tarot cards at a local Renaissance Faire theme park. Lucas is completely unimpressed and disdainful of her fascination with the mystical, but has no doubt she’ll settle down once they’re married. Enter Ian Kelly, mural painter, actor and…witch. He and Lily have a chance meeting at the park, and the attraction is immediate. They have a history…a lot of history. Several lifetimes of it, in fact, and their business together is unfinished.

All three have secrets, one of them deadly. Add in heaping helpings of magic, mayhem, Cuban sandwiches, one large Irish family and one very demanding feline for a story of love so strong, it’ll take more than one century to contain it.

CONTENT WARNING: Language, suggestive scenes

Series: Suit of Cups #1
Release Date: January 7, 2013
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Source: Provided by Publisher
Reviewer: Karon
Rating:
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Reviewer’s Thoughts

This book is a bit of a mash-up: murder, romance and magic. The main action takes place at a year round Renaissance festival where Lilly, a part-time Tarot card reader meets “struggling artist” Ian. Lily is reluctantly dating Lucas, a man she has known since college and whom she feels obligated to because they have been together for long. MacLeod makes it clear very early in the novel that Lily is not invested in her relationship with Lucas and he quickly becomes the villain in the story. The plot moved back and forth in time from the present day relationship between Ian and Lily and their past selves. In this way Suit of Cups was a bit like Diana Gabaldon lite. The scenes from past lives were meant to enhance the story but they felt disjointed when mixed with the serial killer subplot. Maybe if Lucas was included in these past lives as well the different story lines would have come together in a more fluid manner. Instead Lucas becomes a plot twist. I decided to ignore the subplots and focus on the main storyline, Ian and Lily’s love story. When I did that I found I really enjoyed Suit of Cups.