I usually love urban fantasy books but I never found a rhythm reading Catchpenny. The story follows Sid Catchpenny as he tries to solve the mystery of a missing teenager, while putting together the events of his late wife's death. This 'mystery' novel is more of a self discovery novel. Sid is a very whiney man child who I could not stomach.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for this eARC.

With the disclaimer that this is a mashup of a genre I love and a genre that I only occasionally sample, I found this book uneven. Slow to get rolling, its world building and magic-rules-establishing sections capable but not engrossing; once it gets into the noir rhythm, it's fun and compelling for the mid-sixty percent of the book. Then it fizzles for me; as a mystery, we're a step or three ahead of the hero, with one or two too many fake reveals kind of killing time and connections that feel more contrived than satisfying. And, in the effort to make the hero flawed, he became revealed as SUCH a loser that I ended up at a loss for a reason to root for him at all.

Catchpenny is a creative urban fantasy filled with twists and turns. Sid Catchpenny is a thief who can travel through mirrors to steal mojo. Sid is quite broken after the death of his wife and this plays a big part in the story. With a missing teenager, a doomsday cult and the fate of the world at stake, the story is both complex and engrossing.
The author has created a detailed world and there are an abundance of people and plots that all have to come together. Throughout the story, Sid and the reader are left trying to understand how everything comes together and are connected. I felt like the reveals were dragged out at times and I think I would have enjoyed the story more overall if I had understood more earlier on.
Charlie Huston has written a wonderful story and I really liked the magic that existed in this world which is both understandable and believable.

I received and advanced e copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

I read Catchpenny because I enjoyed Charlie Huston’s work on Moon Knight. Huston writes living prose that is peppered with so much creativity. An enjoyable travel through thrill and possibility.

I love Huston’s earlier books and looked forward to this one. But the fantasy element did not hook me though I still loved Huston’s writing. Hope he goes back to crime and or vampire thrillers.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF 30%- I had such high hopes for Catchpenny. This was one I was honestly looking forward to sitting down and being utterly entertained by because it had all the catnip I pretty much love in a fantastical book-snarky MC who is slightly damaged, some mystical/magical elements, and going through mirrors seems pretty cool all while trying to figure out where a missing girl went. What could go wrong?

Whelp, this one just isn't for me. I forced myself to get to 30% in order to give it a fair shot, but the way that the author thrust the reader into this world without a ton of explanation and you have to learn as you go along felt a little frustrating. The mojo concept was interesting, but not enough explanation was done around everything else (like seriously, what is a mannikin anyway?). Perhaps this is for a more patient reader than I am. I didn't find the way that Sidney's backstory was woven into the plot detracting like some reviews I read. I honestly thought that was done really well, but for me trying to figure out the world and all of the threads that the author was creating just left too much to figure out and understand.

Syd Catchpenny lives in a depressive state mourning the death of his wife and child. When a friend requires his unique services to locate a missing teenager, he agrees. He believes this will get him out of debt and hopefully move forward. Syd is a thief who has the ability to travel through mirrors using magic or mojo he acquires through energy coming off certain curiosities. There is a video game that tracks the wishes of a cult leader, evil people who grow their power to dominate society, manikins that are flawed mirror replicas of particular humans and the teenager around whom the mysterious events revolve.

The premise sounded great. I found the story too focused on
Syd as a whiney, selfish, self-absorbed child/man who allowed himself to be a pawn for the powers that be. Eventually he came into his own and the story became better for it. I found the uniqueness of harnessing power from people to try and control outcomes fascinating and the description of nothingness frightening. It was well written and well-crafted; but was not a book I wanted to get back to. I believe others will love the inventiveness.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for this advance copy. All opinions are my own.

3.5 stars rounded up. The premise for this book is so interesting, and there were parts that were really fun to read, but it was not captivating for me. Maybe it's not my style of writing, and someone else will love the story. There were some great unexpected twists in the book that I enjoyed.

Catchpenny is many things. It’s a fantasy book with a magic system unlike most you have seen, based on emotions. Intensity and quantity of emotion creates magic. This quite plausible concept is used to explain real things, from community theatre to suicide cults, from rock concerts to dungeons and dragons games. Because Charlie Huston has thought a lot about the mechanics and the economics that would make people do things to create such magic and pull it to themselves. And he embeds into the narrative real life examples like the Altamont free concert in 1969 where people were stabbed to death. So the book sometimes almost feels like a documentary. But then there are other things like traveling through mirrors and creating duplicates of people from their energy, that give the story kind of house of mirrors feel, somewhat hallucinatory.

Secondly, Catchpenny is a very noir mystery. There are many twists and turns in the story of this abducted teenager, Circe. Catchpenny himself is both narrator and detective and keeps going around, either through mirrors or in the normal ways like walking, through this world where he keeps getting beaten up and threatened by the gangsters of this magic (called mojo), yet he perseveres because he feels that one, everything is connected and two, solving the mystery would get him out of the depression he has been living with. He is a deeply unreliable narrator whose most basic ideas about his own life turn out to be wrong. And yet he is quite canny and through his perspective we get why people do the things they do, how does it benefit them. He is tragic and ridiculous and complicated.

So will you like this book? I don’t know. But should you read this book? I would say you should. It’s quite an experience.

"A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

Sidney Catchpenny has had a bad run. Laid low by a years-long bout of debilitating depression, he's all but squandered his reputation as one of the most uniquely talented thieves in LA. There aren't many who can do what Sid does. He's a sly, a special kind of crook with the uncanny ability to move through mirrors. And the spoils he's after are equally unusual. Forget jewels and cold cash - Sid steals curiosities - items imbued with powerful mojo, a magical essence gleaned from the accumulated emotion that seeps into interesting, though often banal objects. That spot on the carpet where your old dog used to lay at your feet? The passed-down family heirloom nobody wants but everybody refuses to throw away? These curiosities are full of mojo, which is both the currency of the criminal underground and the secret source of magic in the world.

When a friend from Sid's past comes looking for his help with an important client, and the chance to pay off old debts presents itself, Sid seizes the opportunity...as best he can. But the case he stumbles into is more complicated than it seems, and it portends a seismic shift in the world, one that will leave no one untouched. As the fog of his depression begins to lift, Sid sees connections everywhere he looks, and the once disparate threads of the case - a missing teenage girl, an entire bedroom saturated with mojo, and Sid's own long-dead wife - begin to coalesce."

Mojo dojo catchpenny housebreaker? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Thanks to Netgalley and Vintage for the eARC!

So first of all, this book was not for me. I didn't really have a great time reading it.
That being said, the writing is fantastic! The plot is kind of confusing but we're following a character who is constantly baffled so it makes total sense for the narrative.

I understand the importance of unlikable characters and wow, Did is a whiff of stagnancy but again, the book wouldn't make sense if he were really charming. I think lots of people are really going to live this one, though

Catchpenny is, from a technical perspective, a very good book. The prose is exquisite. It has a neat magic system. The way Huston juggles all the moving parts so they all come together in the end is satisfying. The mystery is laid out well. The individual concepts of mojo the magic system, using mirrors, manikins, etc. plus Gyre the game and other elements of the world are incredibly well thought out and executed.
The problem is, I can’t say I enjoyed reading it. There are individual sections of the book I really enjoyed, but for the most, I had to hype myself up to keep reading. I spent basically the entire time very confused. I was intrigued by the mystery, but it wasn’t enough on its own to motivate me to keep reading. So, I read the book in fits and bursts.
I think I was also put off by the fact that I dislike almost every character in the book. I wouldn’t survive a fifteen minute conversation with Sidney Catchpenny without wanting to punch him.
At the same time, I think a lot of the complaints I have about the book were the author’s intention. Catchpenny is confused the whole time, so the reader is too. Catchpenny being kind of an awful person is a major plot point of the book, so of course the reader dislikes him. I find it difficult to criticize a book for being what it was intended to be. My complaints can be easily summed up as “I don’t think this book is for me,” which isn’t necessarily an indicator of quality.
All in all, if you really like pulp fantasy mysteries with well-written prose and a complicated plot, you would really like this book. I just didn’t.

Addendum: I feel like there are some jokes in this book that haven’t aged well considering Sinéad O’Connor has died, presumably since this book was written.

I received an advanced copy (of the review sampler) for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NETGALLEY and Vintage Books / Penguin Random House for sending me this eARC!

I thought this was a really interesting twist on magic in the "real" world. Every time I thought I had everything pegged, Huston managed to throw another curveball at us - and I love it when an author keeps me guessing!

The vintage vibes and nostalgia for a different time certainly spoke to my Gen X heart. And the portrayal of depressive disorders in a less traditional/acyclic manner also really resonated with me.

All in all, a poignant look at the different ways people deal with loss and fear and the lengths we all go to to be the hero of our own stories.

This book was amazing. I had a really hard time putting it down. A previous reviewer described it as something more like a Jim Butcher style story, but I thought it was more like the Nightside series, set in our world. Sid is definitely an unlikable character you can’t help but like. Some other readers hated him, but I honestly felt really bad for him. He was real, he was the person we have inside of us, I think.
As far as the storyline, I loved it. It was wild and insane, and everything I wanted out of this book. It was quite a beautiful story if you read between the lines, which, I hope you do. And once you come to the end, you will realize That the major question in this story is, “What would you be willing to sacrifice?” For me, that answer is everything.

This book is a standalone, but it is set up to be a sequel. I hope it is. It absolutely gave me that same feeling that the Nightside books did. (And I’m still salty about that series ending.) This book absolutely filled that void.

Huge thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

Sid Catchpenny is a depressed sly, living in an alternate reality where magic "mojo" is real. Sid is a thief, using mojo to sly through mirrors, and at the opening of the book he's down on his luck and suffering from severe depression, unable to even get out of bed, when he receives a phone call from Francois, asking for his help to locate Circe, a teenage girl who disappeared a week ago. From there, this book is a detective story of sorts, as Sid sorts through the seedy underworld of mojo dealers and contacts on the hunt for Circe.
The back story of why Sid is so depressed and down on his luck is slowly filled in over the course of the novel, while also expanding and explaining the magic system used in this alternate Los Angeles. From the beginning, Sid is relatively unsympathetic as a main character, but at the same time, I still enjoyed his perspective and how he grew as a character, addressing his own past trauma while also trying to help save Circe from what he is certain is a mojo related working that will irrevocably ruin the world.
There were points when I felt slightly confused by everything that was happening, with regards to the magic system itself, but by the end the details all tied together, and the conclusion closed things off relatively neatly. It wasn't a total Happily Ever After, but it was still satisfying. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy a mix of light fantasy with a crime caper/detective story.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor books and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.

Thanks to NETGALLEY and Vintage Books / Penguin Random House for sending me this eARC

3.5 ★s

The story is told in first person POV via our main guy, Sidney, plus one chapter of told via Circe (our missing girl). Almost every chapter starts with one, short sentence. The setting is Los Angeles, current day, in a world where magic is real. I think we're meant to believe that it all takes place in the course of 24ish hours, but it honestly felt like it covered a few, if not a couple of, days. I'm uncertain if that an error or just me not receiving that vibe. I felt the book started off strong, with a unique and exciting concept, but the third act/conclusion (for me, around 68% into book) was a bit tedious; convoluted. Despite a promising start, it's disappointing. If it turns into a duology, since there's a hint of another installment, perhaps the second book will alleviate that? I would say it's at least worth reading for said concept. As I sit with this book for a moment, I'm beginning to think I would have preferred the 'Gyre' angle/ending; being vague to avoid spoilers. Or maybe less...Things All Happening At Once. I don't know, maybe the author was going for that, it just didn't work for me.

I had never really listened to any of Sinéad O'Connor's music before, but I listened to the songs used in this book (and some others, as well). I always like things like that. But, uh, when a character says -- “I cannot wait. I. Can. Not. Wait. For her to die so I can limn up her manikin to play the party.” -– ...about that... *insert AwkwardSeal.gif* The musician died after the author wrote the book, but it's fine, we're fine.


P.S. You had better have read “Creeeeeeepy.” in Nandor's voice, if you're familiar with 'What We Do In the Shadow'.

This was a strange but highly enjoyable story. It takes place in a different world than ours. If you liked American Gods, then this would be right up your alley. You cannot help but root for Sid..

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of "Catchpenny" by Charlie Huston. I requested this title because it seemed like it would be right up my alley, but by the time I got through it I was practically rushing to be done with it. I can't put my finger on it, but there were several times I almost did not finish the book but eventually kept going forward. I wanted to like our main character, Sid Catchpenny, but by the end he was so unlikeable that not even the conclusion could make him redeemable. I get every character can't be saved, but I wasn't invested in anything by the end. I did like the world-building and magical elements, this just wasn't the book for me.

I loved it! This was amazing! Everywhere Sid found himself he uncovered fragments of awareness that connected to a massive event building. It was not what anyone expected. Sid is a funny, scrappy dude, the nostalgia was fun, and the end was curiously spectacular! Excellent writer.

Big thanks to Knopf/Vintage and NetGalley for the advanced copy. The review below is my own.

Charlie Huston's Catchpenny is a jack of all trades blend of the fantasy, sci-fi and suspense. It's a bit dark, borders of a reality we all can recognize, and truly throws you in head first. If you thrive on context, buckle up. Like signs past a speeding car, you will grab everything in bits and pieces at breakneck speed.

If most stick with it, they will love this novel. That said, it's dense...incredibly dense. Like Death by Chocolate cake covered in chocolate sauce and then deep fried dense. If you don't want to put the work in, this could be a tough one to get through...even if it is delicious and worth it! Like a roller coaster, once you crest that first hill, once momentum hits; it never slows down.