Many thanks to Netgalley and Publisher for my ARC

I finished reading Spitting gold and I'm still reeling from the experience. As a longtime fan of historical fiction and gothic mystery, I was drawn in by the setting and premise of this debut novel. But what I didn't expect was to be so thoroughly captivated by the complex relationship between the two sisters, Sylvie and Charlotte. Their fraught past and present-day deceptions had me both cringing and rooting for them simultaneously!

The way Carmella Lowkiss wove together elements of horror, suspense, and romance was masterful. I found myself staying up late to read 'just one more chapter' and feeling like I was right there in the dark, atmospheric world of 19th-century Paris. The supernatural elements were genuinely chilling, but it was the exploration of family secrets and the power dynamics between the sisters that truly haunted me.

I loved how the author didn't shy away from exploring the complexities of female relationships, desire, and power. The sapphic romance was tender and authentic, adding another layer of depth to the story. If you're a fan of authors like Sarah Waters and Sarah Penner, you'll feel right at home in this world. But Carmella Lowkiss definitely has a unique voice and style that's all their own. I can't wait to see what they do next! Highly, highly recommended for a thrilling and thought-provoking read.

Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis is a book about family, chosen and blood and the strength of each. It’s about greed and the way it changes people. It’s about ghosts and fairy tales and the people who tell those stories. It’s about sisters, and love, and all the ways that love can look and feel and be.

The story is told in first person, and while I typically prefer more escapism in my fiction, the insight we get into Sylvie and Florence because of this point of view is integral to the story. The first half of the novel is told from the older sister’s perspective, and the second half from the younger. While there is some overlap, the author does a great job at not making us sit through the same dialogue again - there is a whole second story happening that we get access to when the POV switches.

I found myself more compelled by the queer sister’s story, of the two, but that has less to do with the writing and more with my personal preferences in books. Both sisters were captivating, and by the time I was 60% through the book, it consumed my every thought, and I didn’t want to put it down.

The relationship between the sisters is one of the best I’ve read. The miscommunication and inability to see past their own experiences, a trope so often used to spice up a romance novel, makes Sylvie and Charlotte feel like real people. They are fleshed-out and flawed, they are passionate and angry, they love each other so much and they are so, so hurt by each other. It’s family, and it’s real.

The ending destroyed me, as all good endings do. I loved this book beginning to end, and I hope this review helps other readers to find it and love it, too.

Content warnings: Family death, domestic abuse, suicide, homophobia. Nothing particularly graphic, although the domestic abuse has brief heavy moments.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

(e-arc provided via NetGalley)

my first foray into reviewing arcs and i found a winner right off the bat... whew! "spitting gold", a historical fiction novel set in 1860's paris, weaves a rich tapestry of scheming, quacks, lying, ripping off rich people, realistic familiar relationships, secrets upon secrets, complex characters aaand lesbians. a twist-y and turn-y ride through long corridors and spiral staircases.

A story of two sisters who do one last spiritualist con but start to wonder if a ghost is real in this sapphic historical fiction.

This book wanted to be so good. There are moments when you question if the author understands human emotion and then moments when you’re struck by the skillful way the author manipulates you and makes you hate each of the sisters in turn. But overall, with a comparison of being like Waters’ tales, it left me very unsatisfied.

I might read her again if a blurb is compelling but the only reason to read this is if you’re just that thirsty for a sapphic protagonist.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice: None
POV: Dual 3rd

I can maybe see the comparison of Spitting gold to Sarah Waters but it didn't overlap too much for me. This is not necessarily a bad thing though. Overall, Spitting Gold is a dark story with fascinating characters and relationships. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in easy historical mystery read.

Like other reviewers, I certainly have a favorite sister's perspective to read. Although having both POVs was fun to see how one another saw each other. Kind of makes me wish I could do that with all my sisters. The perspectives in the book while distinct were sometimes unreliable. Yet, all the characters and the relationships in the book kept me engaged and interested til the very end.

*The book does include some dark topics! Definitely check out TW

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books Publisher for this eARC!

I liked this book. It reminded me a lot of Sarah Waters' style right from the start. The twists and turns are slightly more obvious than in a classic Sarah Waters story, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment. The book is divided into two parts, each told from one of the sisters' perspectives. Honestly, I preferred the second part and wished it was a bit longer. But I think it was interesting to have the perspective of how each of the sisters saw themselves and each other. A lot of this book is hard to talk about because it spoils too much about some of the twists in the story and I wouldn't want to do that. But I think it's certainly a story worth reading.

Review will be posted to GoodReads and StoryGraph on the publication date.

Spitting gold is a difficult book to rate for me. We begin our story with Sylvie, the good girl who got out of the slums, married rich, and never wants to go back. She is convinced by her sister, Charlotte, to return for one last con, returning to the world of faking spirit medium powers to scam money from the grieving. However she finds herself out of her depth as she begins to realize that many of the events surrounding the haunting she is meant to be fabricating don’t have easy answers.

Sylvie is our point of view character for nearly half this book, and every moment stuck in her head was unbearable. She was primarily concerned with her marriage (which we had never seen when it was good, so I did not particularly care when it started to go bad) and judging her sister. She is selfish and vain and illogical. Also her story dragged, focusing on characters we had no reason to like rather than the interesting elements of the plot: namely the spirit mediums and their gothically tragic clients.

If we had not switched perspectives to Charlotte halfway through the book, I would not have finished it. As it was, not knowing that that perspective change was coming, I very nearly didn’t get to it.

When we finally do shift perspectives halfway through, the book became leaps and bounds better. The writing was strong throughout, and in this second half it became apparent that Sylvie’s character flaws were deliberate, a set up so we could better understand her dynamic and role in Charlotte’s story. Had the entire thing been from Charlotte’s perspective, this would have been a 4-4.5 start book.

With the new point of view character, this becomes a beautiful story about family bonds, betrayal, love, and loyalty. We gain new insights into the mystery of the family Sylvie and Charlotte are conning (which had always been intriguing, but took up too little of Sylvies story), and into how the girls grew up together. We begin to understand the fractious bonds of these two sisters, informed by our unpleasant time in Sylvies head, but fleshed out and given dimension by our time in Charlotte’s. I cared about Charlotte and the people populating her world in a way I’d never had the chance to with Sylvie.

I think I understand what this book was going for. It was meant to lure us in with Sylvies perspective, set us up to believe her since she was our narrator. We were meant to sympathize with Sylvie, thé good sister, who maybe wasn’t perfect but tried to do what was right while her ungrateful and unsympathetic sister blamed her for falling in love and leaving. Then when we flip to Charlotte’s perspective, we’re shown that we had a biased picture and realize that everything was always more complicated than that. This is spoiled by two things. The first is that the ‘foreshadowing’ during Sylvies section, in other words the indications that she wasn’t actually the perfect sister, were so heavy handed as to make it painfully obvious that Sylvie kinda sucked. The second was that it was not clear that we would be changing perspectives at all, meaning it very much seemed that we would be stuck with an uninteresting, unsympathetic, nearly unbearable narrator for the entire story, and that her world view was the one we were meant to accept.

This book has a lot of potential, and once I got to the halfway mark it became a really good read. However I did not enjoy getting there.

Thank you to Atria Publishing and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Spitting Gold is stealthy spectral historical fiction novel full of twists and turns, appearances and disappearances, and the real and imagined ghosts that haunt us.

Charlotte and Sylvie are two estranged sisters and former spiritual mediums, whose fakery and trickery fooled their clients but foiled their relationship. Sylvie, now a baroness, decided to leave it all behind in favour of a life of prestige and comfort, while Charlotte was left behind, poor, and forced to care for their dying and abusive father. When Charlotte appears on Sylvie's doorstep one day begging her to join her for one last scheme, Sylvie will have to decide where her loyalties lie.

I have read many spiritualist fiction books, and this is by the far the best one I have read. The cat and mouse game that occurred not only between the sisters and their clients, but between themselves, almost read like a clever crime thriller, where blackmail, vengeance, and misplaced guilt were the real ghosts haunting the sisters. Love and loyalty were bargained and bartered so that each sister while trying to save herself, endangered each other in unforgiveable ways. Secrets from the past were the high stakes that each sister needed to grapple with, so that like a ghost, what was true and what was a lie became blurry and hauntingly intrusive. The supernatural aspects of the story supported the intricate plot involving the haunted family, whose own secrets and tragedies mirrored the sisters complex relationship. I liked that the book was written with a dual perspective, one from Charlotte's, the other from Sylvie's point of view because it helped to drive home the idea, that nothing was as it appeared to be.

If you like ghostly fiction and stories about sisterly bonds, mother daughter relationships, and Parisian historical fiction, then I would highly recommend Spitting Gold. It will surprise you.

Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis is an entertaining historical fiction that takes us back to the streets of Paris in the 19th century.

This was a unique his fiction that incorporated mystery, romance, gothic and realistic elements into one novel. Involving that “world in between” created an interesting push and pull with the narrative that helped add a layer of complexity. The edges of the “spiritual” world and the “real” world were skillfully woven together to create more mist and mystery as we follow along with the two main characters and sisters, Sylvie Devereux and Charlotte Mothe.

It was an interesting read that kept me interested until the end.

4/5 stars

Thank you NG and Atria Books for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my NG account only at this time and will publish it to my GR, Bookbub, Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 5/14/24 per publisher request.

The cover of this book is what drew me in and made me want to read it. I love the Gothic Lesbian feel to this book.

When i started reading it had me hooked but later in the book it felt like it dragged. I wish there would have been more of a dual POV. I did like seeing the twists unfold.

I did enjoy the book and thanks to NetGalley for letting me read and review.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was an intriguing story about ghosts, both the spooky kind(the existence of which may be up for interpretation) and the line inflicted on people by trauma. This was also a story about sisters.

The comparison to Sarah Waters is apt, though perhaps not quite as clever. Nonetheless, it's a fairly twisty read in its own right, some that I saw coming, and some fairly dark ones that I did not.

The perspectives in the book were well-written and distinct, yet sometimes unreliable. The narrative and relationships felt warped by the characters's personal views. That is why I am still not quite sure where I land on Sylvie's relationship with Alexandre. The relationships of the Mothe family were also warped somewhat and were rather interesting to explore. I was also really surprised by how well-developed the sapphic relationship was, and the love interest was a fantastic character. Honestly, all the characters and relationships in the book were very interesting to explore.

As I've mentioned, the book dives into some dark topics including mentions of sexual assault and different forms of abuse. I wouldn't look up detailed TWs because they can be quite spoilery, but the darkness of the content

Overall, Spitting Gold is a dark and twisty story with fascinating characters and relationships. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a Sarah Waters-esque historical mystery.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC of Spitting Gold.

I was excited to read this book since it had a gothic lesbian feel to it. I absolutely love queer historical fiction. It is so fun to read about history but with the queer perspective. The first part of this book I really enjoyed. It had a dark and mysterious feel to it. Like a breath on your neck even when there is no one around. When we got to the second half I kind of got bored. It was more of a me problem where I just didn't enjoy going through everything that happened but in Charlotte's point of view. I felt it just slowed down the story a lot. I would've enjoyed finding out more through Sylvie's point of view. Otherwise I quite enjoyed the story and loved seeing the twists.

This review is also posted on GoodReads.

"Spitting Gold" by Carmella Lowkis is a historical fiction novel set in 19th-century Paris, offering a captivating blend of gothic mystery and sapphic romance. The story revolves around Baroness Sylvie Devereux and her estranged sister, Charlotte Mothe, both celebrated and fraudulent spirit mediums.

The narrative unfolds in 1866 when Sylvie, haunted by her past as a spirit medium, receives a visit from her sister Charlotte. Despite their strained relationship, Sylvie is convinced to join forces with Charlotte for one last con. Their target is the de Jacquinot family, aristocrats who believe they are haunted by the ghost of their great aunt, murdered during the French Revolution.

As the sisters embark on the elaborate scheme to exploit the fears of the de Jacquinot family and secure their gold, mysterious and inexplicable events begin to unfold. The narrative takes a chilling turn as the line between reality and the supernatural becomes blurred, and the sisters question whether they themselves are at the mercy of a vengeful spirit.

Against the backdrop of a Parisian setting in upheaval, the novel explores themes of deception, family dynamics, and the secrets that linger from the past. The captivating storyline promises a journey through the shadowy realms of both the human heart and the supernatural, making it an intriguing read for fans of historical fiction, gothic mystery, and LGBTQIAP+ romance.