“I lived life on the line that bordered stupid and clever. It’s called being sly”.

To be sly is to have a cunning or deceitful nature. To act surreptitiously. To remark, glance, or express something in a way that insinuates one has some secret knowledge that could be harmful or embarrassing.

Catchpenny is a sly novel. It is clever, cunning, deceitful, and it is stupid…if you want to count stupid crazy. That’s probably why I liked it so much.

Urban fantasy noir (which is what I largely categorize this book as) is a subgenre mashup that I never get to read much of but I love a whole lot (just like my enduring love for cybertech noir, another subgenre mashup). When we get down to subgenre mashups I feel we’re hitting full-on speculative fiction territory–we’re entering all-new territory. In books like this, there are rules but also? Screw the rules.

I had a similar experience nearing the end of reading Catchpenny as I did with reading Noah Hawley’s Anthem: In this book the adults are the problem. The youth are the solution. The youth isn’t wasted on the young. It’s the adults who should be ashamed of the way they’ve wasted their lives and traded in all of their promises and dreams for empty lives filled up with selfish wants and needs when they could have had a fuller life and a fuller heart by spreading love, knowledge, and resources around to be used by more people.

It’s a little longer than I thought it needed to be, but Catchpenny is an intricate web of a story that has a large cast of characters and events that are all interconnected. It takes time to establish those strands, get them settled in place, bring the third act to its climax, and then to unravel the web without ripping it and risk a messy dismount from such a carefully constructed plot.

I thought it was a wonderful read. I love out of the box books, and this definitely meets that brief.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under:Amateur Sleuth/Noir/Occult Fiction/Speculative Fiction/Urban Fantasy

his interesting novel is a bit out of my comfort zone, but I am glad I took a chance to read it. I love books with magic, and this one, set in Los Angeles, is a mix of sci-fi, urban fantasy, and crime fiction with a magic system that I found very imaginative.

The book is a wild ride! In addition to the magical system, there's an underworld crime syndicate, a missing teenage girl to find, a suicide cult, a mysterious doomsday video game, and a main character who is trying to find the missing teen and ultimately himself, amidst all of this while struggling with depression and grief. The plot is complex, and there are a lot of characters. I'd say this is one of the most unique books I've encountered, and I found it well-written.

Reading this is definitely an experience. The reader is kept intentionally in the dark about how the magic works and other aspects, and there are many twists, turns, and little details, all of which kept me on my toes and guessing. However, I struggled to connect with the characters, even MC Sid, maybe because so much was happening, and I didn't understand pieces of it until the end. And Sid made some questionable choices. Nevertheless, I am glad I read this, and it was a good one to step out of my comfort zone.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, Anchor, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

This one took a bit to get into, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The beginning is definitely slow, but you slowly get more invested in the plot. It centers around mojo, or magic, and one girl that has disappeared. But she isn’t a victim in this story, far from it. Now the main narrator, he is something else. You kind of feel bad for him, but as the story goes on, you start to question if he might be more of a villain. Good mystery/urban fantasy-esque story

From the description, I went into this book expecting a noir-ish urban fantasy a la Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. While there was the zany madcap action of those, this was really an introspective novel. And honestly an introspective novel of a middle-aged guy is not really my jam.

The magic system of the world in the book was interesting and well thought out, if not well explained from the start. The reader learns more as the book goes on about how mojo (magic) works. The idea that mojo can be captured by deep emotional connections to pop cultural items was one I found super interesting.

Sid as a character is…not great. Not particularly interesting or sympathetic, mostly a guy who has wasted his life away for no good reason. There is a huge plot of characters here, almost too many to keep track of. And while some of them were interesting (Francois! Munroe!) they as a whole were pretty terrible too. The female characters served as caricatures and were flatly written.

There was so much going on in this book that the plot felt very muddled: magic and video games and death cults and…it was a lot to keep track of. The book starts off as a missing person mystery but then shifts to madcap fantasy, then introspection and I felt like I had whiplash reading it.

All in all I think that a lot of people will connect with this book. It wasn’t quite for me, though I appreciated several aspects and thought the idea behind it was solid, but the execution seemed unfocused and didn’t connect with me. The right reader will love and appreciate this book, but I am not the right reader.

This was just ok for me. Leaning more towards not good. The whole thing felt overly wordy for what it was. It just seemed to go on and on for no reason. The book could have been edited down quite a bit. But for me I found it too predictable and that was frustrating. To stick with the story for so long only for it to be exactly what you predicted, it’s a let down.

Catchpenny is an unusual novel. Its like nothing I’ve read recently, and its a little hard to describe. The main character, Sid, is a thief with a bad case of clinical depression. He’s a “sly”, which is apparently the author’s slang for a certain kind of thief. He steals items with “mojo”, notably things that have been the object of strong emotion.

It's best to completely suspend your disbelief with Catchpenny and just go with the flow. The story line has to do with a teenage girl, Circe, who has ostensibly been stolen. Or has she? And her mother, Iva, is obsessed with keeping Circe’s room exactly like she left it. Hence it becomes a strong source of mojo.

There’s a whole underworld of mojo, with characters like Hillary Minerva, who is a banker to the world but a boss in the world of mojo. There are a lot of dark places in the book, but in the end, in its own way, it is about good I think.

I'm not going to tell you whether Sid finds Circe. You’ll have to read the book for yourself. But hang on for the ride. It's strange but good.

The story is set in a world that is similar to ours, but it has magic that only some of the people can use. Catchpenny is one of those people. In the story, he tries to find a missing girl, but while doing so, he also has to dig into his past. The ending is a bit naive, but overall it was a good read.

I received the book from netgalley

Catchpenny is an odd story. It took a bit to get used to how Sid and the others use mojo to sly their way into things and find memorabilia the has mojo stored in it for later use. I think the characters in the story got to be quite colorful because of their coursing of the mojo. Once I got used to that, it was intriguing to see how it all was connected, from what happened to Sid in the past to wait is going on in the present as he searches for the missing Circe and learns all about Gyre with the Demon rising and what Circe is planning to do to change the world..

My mind felt all twisted up, especially with the Gyre stuff but it was interesting to read and then think about. I am kind glad though that mojo doesn't work like that in this world...at least as far as I know. :)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an advance copy of this book and review it.

I was vibing on the synapsis and vibing even more on the cover. I'm sure I'm not the first or last to agree with that. I first heard of Charlie Huston through a friend that read "Already Dead" and highly recommended it. I have not read that novel yet but when I came across Catchpenny, I jumped at the opportunity since "Already Dead" came with high praise. This novel reminds me of Joe Hill's "Fireman". Both left me with the feeling that concept and hook of the story sounded so amazing but the execution just never reaches the full level of potential. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this novel (as well as "Fireman"). Maybe my expectation and creative juices flowed differently when I read the synapsis.

The pacing of the novel is pretty slow. I'm not really into the slow burn novels. I prefer my novels to be exciting and action packed or scare me or keep me wondering. This didn't check those boxes for me but I pushed along due to the recommendation of "Already Dead". There are things I liked in the book which make me want to move "Already Dead" higher on my TBR list. I like the creativity Charlie Huston has in his books so I will definitely keep track of his future work and hope that one or more of my reading checkboxes gets crossed off in the next novel.

I want to thank Charlie Huston, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor, and NetGalley for providing me with an advance digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

Such a fun paced magical realism storyline! I couldn’t put it down. Sid is a flawed MC that I couldn’t help but root for. I do wish the ending was just a smidge different but that’s just personal preference

I first discovered Charlie Huston when I fell into his gritty Joe Pitt series. I was completely drawn in by his he writing and that’s probably when I first realized I was a fan of noir. Then I read The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and it was a five star read for me.

All this to say that I have very much enjoyed some of Huston’s books. They are weird and creative and there is a sense of melancholy that appeals to me.

Catchpenny is no exception. At one point while reading I was wondering about the author’s brain and how he comes up with this stuff. It’s such a crazy cast of characters and a weird world of magic, a suicide cult, a missing girl, a strange video game and a depressed and down and out guy trying to see the connection between these things.

This book isn’t for everyone, but I was happy to go on the ride.

When I got the widget for Catchpenny, I almost didn’t accept it. I wasn’t looking for another book to review (I have been actively trying to get my NetGalley ARCs down to a manageable number). But then I read the blurb, which made me pause on deleting the email. After rereading the blurb (several times), I decided to accept the widget. I am glad that I did because I did enjoy reading Catchpenny.

I do want to give you guys a heads-up. There is a lot of lore and backstory thrown at you at once, and that might cause you to go, “Well, no. Not for me.” Trust me, get through the first few chapters, and the author will explain things.

The main storyline in Catchpenny was different. Sidney Catchpenny is a depressed thief who hasn’t left his bed in weeks. He gets pulled, kicking and screaming, out of bed and into the world when an old friend asks him to help him with a personal matter. That personal matter ends up being the disappearance of a teenage girl. As Sid investigates the case, he finds ties to a doomsday death cult, his old manager, a video game, and his dead wife. Sid needs to figure out what is going on and who is to blame before something awful happens, like the end of the world.

Sometimes, first impressions can be wrong, which was the case with Sid. When the book began, I doubted if he could help his friend-he was that depressed. I also noticed that he was a very unreliable narrator. His take on things was slightly different from what other people remember (like the death of his pregnant wife). But, as the book went on and as his depression subsided, I began to see Sid in a different light. Yes, he was significantly damaged, but he was a good person. And the good person in him wanted to find Circe (the teenager) and bring her home.

I enjoyed the magic system in Catchpenny. The magic was called mojo, and it was infused everywhere. Sid was a thief who stole items infused with mojo (an example used in the book: a rug that a beloved dog slept on until it died). The stolen mojo was then used by other parties to help themselves out (politicians were used as an example in the book). Sid also had a different sort of magic. He could travel by mirror to various places. Manikins and other magical beings are also mentioned throughout the book.

Catchpenny did make me feel like I was reading a script out of a fever dream for most of the book. Usually, that is something that I don’t like, but in this case, it suits the book. The fever dream feeling intensified towards the end (once Sid started putting the puzzle pieces together).

The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was who the bad guy ended up being. It was a twist that I didn’t see coming. I had it pegged on the defacto head of the doomsday cult/game developer. So, I was shocked when it was revealed who was behind everything and why. My mouth dropped open, and a “No shit” came out. There wasn’t a hint of this person being the bad guy or why this person did what they did. It is a huge surprise.

The end of Catchpenny was different. While the author wrapped up the main storylines (and made Sid face some facts about himself), much remained unanswered. I hope that the author addresses that in a second book.

Many thanks to Knoph, Panteon, Vintage, and Anchor, Vintage, NetGalley, and Charlie Huston for allowing me to read and review this ARC of Catchpenny. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

Catchpenny follows Sid, a thief who can slip through mirrors. When he is called to help an old friend, Sid must reckon with all his old enemies and debts. As Sid works to complete an impossible quest, could the fate of the world hang in the balance?

Catchpenny is a weird and enthralling book. It’s very hard to put down! I found myself reading carefully, trying to get a handle on the magic system in this book. The magic system was really interesting and I liked how it was designed. It was fun to try and predict which items would hold “mojo.” Sid is a morally gray character who tries his best, but sometimes makes unlikable choices. The conclusion and climatic moment felt rushed to me. I can definitely see the comparison to Jim Butcher, but I’m not sure about the Neil Gaiman comparison. I think readers who like complicated characters, urban fantasy, and Jim Butcher will enjoy this book.

Thank you to Charlie Hurston, Vintage, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Goodreads, Instagram, Storygraph, Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc.

3.5 stars

This book has a super interesting and unique premise and magic system, like none I've read before. It reads more sci-fi than fantasy, and is grounded in the real world. I liked the lovable jackass main character, Sidney, and was curious about how things would end up, but there was so much happening and so many characters that I had a hard time getting caught up in the momentum of the story and fully immersed. 

This story takes place in present-day LA, but unbeknownst to most people. there's magic called "mojo" powering everything. Mojo is essentially energy or attention, and it can be created or drawn from almost anything---a beloved copy of a book you've read and reread throughout the years? It's full of mojo. A party where everyone is having a great time and making meaningful connections? Generating mojo. 
Sidney Catchpenny is a thief who possesses the rare ability to sly, or travel through mirrors. He was once renowned for his skill, but lately he's been way too depressed to steal anything. He used to have a different life, was on the cusp of becoming a rockstar, when he found out about mojo in the most jarring way possible. He walked in on his own reflection murdering his wife. Ever since, he's been on a convoluted mission to k*ll himself. 

But when an old friend needs help finding a missing girl, Sid drags himself out of bed to help. The more he looks into the case, though, the stranger things get. There are abnormal amounts of mojo being generated and directed in specific directions, longstanding traditions being changed, mysterious online games, sinister cults, and of course, Sid's reflection, AGAIN. If Sidney doesn't figure out what's going on before it's too late, it could mean the end of the world. Which is really annoying because he kind of just wants to go back to bed. 
If you like your sci-fi adventures real-world focused and with social commentary and morally questionable characters, check this one out! Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

This story was a rollercoaster! A lot was going on with a lot of characters. Honestly it was fun but not my cup of tra

Lots of characters and lots going on in this book!

“Mojo” or magic was everywhere in the world - and like everything, it was for sale to the highest bidders and open to the most cunning thieves. Great concept that just needed more cohesion.

Thanks to Net Galley and publishers for the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

I'm not sure what to make of this book. It seemed to me to be a fantasy, sci-fi, mystery and paranormal thriller all in one package. We have a thief without a heart (literally) who can teleport through mirrors, a rebellious teenaged girl who becomes the channel for a mysterious online game that promises to remake the world and a host of other decidedly untraditional characters. Add to that mixture a dose of mojo and you have the recipe for dandy misadventures.
I had a bit of trouble getting into this one but the overall story was compelling enough to keep me reading. I was interested enough to want to find out how it ended. The author does wrap everything up at the end but some of it left me wanting to know more. I liked some of the characters and loathed others but I needed to know what happens to all of them.

This book has a lot going on. I had difficulty staying in the story, it was a bit over stuffed with characters, plots, twists, evil plans within evil plans for this reader. I really liked the magic mojo developed here, it was new and could have really been developed. Unfortunately it got muddled in the villains, plots, back stories and more. It felt like I was reading this forever.

The characters were not a likable group for me, the main character Sid was the least. It’s hard to read a book, for me when I can’t find anyone to cheer for. There were a few times that the characters spoke like whinny pre-teens, which was really off from how they were written through the book.
The ending was weird, the epilogue was weirder, it felt so rushed. It didn’t fit well with the whole story.
I enjoyed the possibilities in the magical world. I liked the world this author created. I didn’t enjoy the way it was written.

I really enjoyed this book. Usually if magic appears in the book’s blurb, I shy away from it unless it’s Neil Gaiman. I am not usually a big fan of magic but I decided to take a chance and I am glad that I did. . This book was a fun, fast paced and difficult to put down. I thought the source of the magic, mojo, was fun and inventive. There was lot going on surrounding magic that was creative. The main character, Sid, is flawed and selfish. Probably not the most likable but you root for him anyway. There is a mystery to be solved and connections abound and everything comes together in the end.

3.5

There is so much going on in this book that it's sometimes hard to keep track of it all. Besides the many goings on, there are also a lot of terms associated with the magic - or mojo as it's called - used that aren't explained very well, which can leave readers in the dark as to what it all means. The basic premise follows the main character, Sid Catchpenny, as he gets called on by an old friend to help track down a missing teenager. It quickly becomes clear that there is much more going on than a simple missing persons case, but it all gets rather convoluted at times. Sid jumps from event to event rather quickly and literally, as he is one of the few people in the world who is a sly - a person who can travel almost instantaneously from one place to another by jumping through mirrors. He's also one of those main characters that you're supposed to be sympathetic towards, but it's rather hard most of the time as he makes himself very unlikeable, much like every other character in this book. There isn't a single character I really enjoyed. They are mostly tolerable, with a few that I couldn't stand. When you don't enjoy the characters, it can make it a lot harder to get through a story, as you can't connect as well to what's going on. I do have to say though that most of the characters played their parts well and served their purpose in the story, even if I couldn't connect to them. Eventually I did come around to Sid as more of his story is explained, but even then, I didn't love him.

As the events continue, they get rather ridiculous, which is saying a lot for a book that involves jumping through mirrors and collecting mojo off beloved items. However, I did like the underlying message from the final event of the book, even if I didn't necessarily like everything leading up to it. The ending was ambiguous enough to believe that a sequel could be possible, though not necessary. I think I would have enjoyed this more had there been characters I could connect with more and parts of the magic system explained better. It is one of the most unique magic systems I've read about and one I did enjoy, but I wish we'd been given just a little more information on it. If there ends up being a sequel, I'll pick it up, as I do want to know if a few of the loose ends get taken care of.