This was an entertaining and fun historical story. I enjoyed the beginning atmopshere with the seance component. I enjoyed the first part from Sylvie's perspective more than Charolotte's perspective. Overall, something was missing from the book to make me really love it. But it was entertaining and enjoyable.

The atmosphere here is beautiful and haunting. Sylvie and Charlotte are wonderful characters and the plot is well executed. This is more of a slow burn as each of the sisters give their very different points of view on the same events. I truly enjoyed how it all came together in the end.

I quite enjoyed this historical fiction with a bit of mystery sprinkled in. I see other reviewers were under the impression that this would be historical fantasy, and I was too, based on the cover! The first half of the book seems to lean that direction, but then the perspective changes and we get to peer behind the curtain, and the story is really about family and love … and not so much about ghosts.

Sylvie and Charlotte are sisters who have recently both fallen out and retired their act as spiritists, working for rich people who want to contact the dead. Charlotte comes to Sylvie, asking for her help for one more con. But there turns out to be a deeper mystery troubling the de Jacquinet family than a fake ghost.

The first half of the book is told from Sylvie’s perspective, and the second half from Charlotte’s. Note: This is the appropriate number of times for a narrator change in a book, IMO. There’s some unreliable narrator play at work, and the relationship between the sisters is well explored in this change in perspective.

I see this has been compared to Sarah Penner’s novels, which I think is an apt parallel. It also reminded me a bit of Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese.

Spitting Gold is a solid debut. I enjoyed the first part - Sylvie’s POV, more than Charlotte’s version, but found the sisters strong, but unlikeable. The gothic historic Paris setting was an interesting setting that added to the story. Three stars for this story, but I’d read this author again.

Thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for a free copy.

Atria eARC
An extremely unique and well done historical fiction that I'll be thinking about for a while. I loved the format here - but don't want to say anything about it because I want people to be surprised by it. I loved the aspect of sisters coming together to con someone, especially through seances. It added so much interesting elements to the plot. I genuinely was surprised right along with the characters and was so impressed with the storytelling here. I was gripped from beginning to end and couldn't put the book down.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for this arc!

This is such a fun, engaging historical mystery told from the POV of two sisters working as fraudulent spirit mediums in 1860s France.

The sisters have a complicated past, but Charlotte has convinced her older sister, Sylvie to help with one last deception. The storyline kept me guessing and several twists had me completely shocked.

(It was also nice to read a historical novel that is set during a different time and place than WWII England.)

This was well-written, especially for a debut. I look forward to more work from this author.

I received a free copy of Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. What a thrill! This stunning debut spins gothic story tropes on their heads, as it tells the gripping story of two sister mystics who get caught up in a truly haunting family drama. Often, this genre can be droll but this book was plotted at a roller coaster pace that never let up. The perfect vacation read that I snapped up in two days. Spitting Gold is A thrill from start to finish with an amazing ending that this reader will remember forever!

One review claimed this was a Sarah Waters-esque novel and I do have to agree on that.

Setting that aside, Spitting Gold has its on unique voice for a sapphic historical novel.

I enjoyed the lead up to the halfway mark but was left confused in terms of what the characters became. I definitely understood the murky ideas of good versus evil between the sisters. But still couldn’t manage to get a firm hold on the motivations pushing them to make their decisions.

Overall it was a fun story to read!

(Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for access to this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

Overall, I give this book a 3/5 stars.

Spitting Gold revolves around two estranged sisters who used to work together to con families as fraudulent spirit mediums, and are in it again for one last show.

I think the author did a great job in the aspects of world-building and the creation of the characters and their personalities. I found myself enjoying Sylvie and disliking Charlotte in the first half, and then rooting for Charlotte and hating Sylvie in the second half. If this is what the author was intending, she did a really great job at getting readers to follow along.

This book would have been an easy 4, maybe even 5 stars, up until the last sentence of Part One. I found that as soon as Part One ended, the book was no longer really what it was advertised to be, and turned more into a mystery rather than a paranormal - haunting story. Which, in and of itself, is not what lowered my rating.

I think the separation of the POVs of the two sisters between Part One and Part Two really threw me for a loop. I was confused and not really sure what was happening, and found myself skimming through the first half of Charlotte’s chapters because they weren’t really going anywhere. I could have done without the backtracking in time to explain Charlotte’s involvement, BUT the backtracking is what helped to develop the romance, and I think that it is Florence who really saved the book for me.

Overall, I’m still feeling a bit confused about what all happened. I am certainly glad I read this book, and I would read another of this author, it just wasn’t my favourite.

This is a wonderful debut. Lowkis' storytelling mixed with the gothic elements pulls you right into 1866 Paris. Many times I find with Gothic novels that the line between excellence and falling short is a thin line of how the gothic elements, tropes, and characters are used. Lowkis, however, doesn't cross that line and instead pushes it to create a gothic novel that is enjoyable, thrilling, and overall a great read. The pacing was slow in some areas; however, when the pacing, characters, and storytelling came together, it was a thrilling read that I couldn't put down.

For a séance book this isn’t very (if you’ll permit me to make up a word) séance-y.

Alas, I should have heeded blurb warnings that said “for fans of Sarah Waters,” whose work I’m not fond of. It’s an apt comparison, though Waters is a superior writer of plot. If you like her style, you’ll probably like this better than I did.

Mostly though, the book is just depressing in that “bad guys always come out on top” kind of way, or bad girls, as the case is here. I find books that victimize the heroine to be a tough hang, and that’s the primary reason I didn’t enjoy this. I liked Sylvie a lot, and she’s a reasonably well written character, but she feels like she exists only to be the victim of her sister’s selfish and reckless actions.

It’s not that i don’t understand why Charlotte feels like she got dealt a bad hand, but the way she treats her sister, effectively ruining her life multiple times, wipes out any trace of sympathy I had for her.

And as mentioned above, the book doesn’t use the setting very well, particularly when it comes to the spiritualism components. There’s nothing eerie about the book. It lacks a sense of atmosphere, and the plot twist connected to the central séance scene is clever, but it breeds other problems that make the book deeply unenjoyable.

There is so much good fiction out there focused on séances and spiritualism. Skip this and go with one of the many better books on the topic instead.

Set in 1866 Paris and described as for fans of Sarah Waters, I couldn't resist checking out Camelia Lowkis's adult novel debut, Spitting Gold.

The story focuses on Baroness Sylvie Devereux and her sister Charlotte. Sylvie has obtained upper class respectability with a loving husband and a comfortable home. Her sister Charlotte, however, is still struggling, living with a dying father and trying to make a living as spirit medium, something her sister had given up in her social climbing. When Charlotte, pulls her sister in for one last scheme it could destroy both their lives.

The story itself was enjoyable with lots of intrigue, gothic melodrama, and some Sapphic romance, but what to me was most interesting was the the way in which Lowkis give us first one sisters perspective and then the other of what unfolded with part one and part two covering much of the same time, but from totally different unique and equally compelling view points. Perrault's French fairytale, "The Fairies" or better known in English as, "Diamonds and Toads" is referenced several times about a "good" sister who is rewarded with wealth by a fairy and a "bad" sister punished, but in the end for the novel it is much more murky who is the "good" and who is the "bad."

Spitting Gold caught my eye because it gave me historical fiction mixed with Ouija: Origin of Evil vibes by the description. Within the first few pages, it already had me saying “excuse me what?!” and making guesses as to whether or not the main character was going for the long con and who was being played by whom.

I wanted to love this book SO BADLY, but it seems like the long con was a bit too long for my attention span. After 63 pages of not really getting anywhere I’ve set the book down for the foreseeable (no pun intended) future.

I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed discovering the relationship between Sylvie and Charlotte! The atmospheric tension was great. It sort of gave me the energy of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson in that way.

Ok yall. I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted a book review but this gothic masterpiece from @carmellalowkis was so good it pulled me from my semi-retirement. Are we sure this was a debut? Because it was so beautifully written. I enjoyed the shift to the second sister’s point of view more than I thought I would because I’m usually a fan of alternating point of views. I loved Charlotte’s character way more so I only became more interested the further into the book I got. I saw a lot of reviews that knocked off stars because “it wasn’t horror like I thought” or “it was marketed to me as sci-fi and was let down because that genre didn’t quite fit” but honestly the fact this book was unique and touched on multiple labels made me love the book even more. Kudos to Carmella for keeping me guessing and on my toes the entire time. Pick this one up if you’re a fan of witchy vibes, sister drama and sketchy con artists.

Thank you to @netgalley and @atriabooks for the gifted copy of this book!

This book wasn’t terrible but I feel like it was marketed wrong. It’s not a ghost story but a historical family melodrama mixed with lesbianism, not Gothic nor ghost story. It isn’t terrible but not as marketed which was a big let down. Also I don’t think they used the word ain’t in 1800s France. Glad I didn’t buy it!

Thanks to the author and publisher for the copy I received via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I was really wanting to enjoy this book especially because I thought the cover was so cool but it just didn’t work for me. I think that this was largely because I preferred Charlotte as a character, so all the Sylvie POV chapters dragged for me. I would have rather read a whole book from Sylvie’s POV, but the midpoint reveal wouldn’t work if the book was written that way. This is also just a personal thing but I’ve found that first person POV books are something I don’t connect with as much. Frankly I think it comes down to the writing style/POV just not being my taste.

Thanks to Atria Books for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. This is my honest review.

More queer books like this please. I usually read romance but mysteries, Horror, and scifi are really my favorites. It's just hard not easy to find those in the queer genre. In the last few years that really started to change.

This isn't a story about love, but instead about a mystery. Set in 1866 Paris, when Europe was kicking up speed on the Industrial Revolution and the world was on the precipice of emence change. Skeptics start to emerge and spiritual scammers are declining, able to get away with the scam less and less.

It was so interesting to see this in a queer context, and without it being the focal point of the story. Sapphics just existing even when they aren't necessarily the best of people in this story. It was real, funny, and interesting. A great debut novel!
3.5 stars 🌟

With gorgeous prose and a lovely gothic feel, this definitely delivered on its “for fans of Sarah Waters” promise. It felt like a solid blend of Fingersmith and Affinity. Though this was more predictable than Waters’ books, there were still plenty of twists and turns to keep me guessing whether the ghosts were real, fake, or some combination of the two.

Sylvie’s perspective held my attention, but I feel like the book truly picked up when it switched over to Charlotte’s perspective, in large part because Florence stole my heart. I really wanted that poor gal to win.

My only criticism is that the ending felt rushed, the final twist was too obvious, and I don’t think the epilogue was needed.

Overall, a very impressive debut. I look forward to reading more from Carmella Lowkis.

CW: For DA, deaths, and mentions of past SA.

I received an advanced copy from the publisher and am voluntarily leaving this review.

**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**

Carmella Lowkis debuts with Spitting Gold, a historical fiction novel centered on two spiritist sisters. Set in 19th century Paris, Sylvie and Charlotte Mothe had built a reputation as spiritists which ended in their abrupt retirement after an incident that resulted in their estrangement. Sylvie married into a title and as baroness Devereaux, she has all she ever dreamed. When Charlotte shows up at Sylvie's home, Sylvie is dragged into one more haunting. The de Jacquinot family has requested their services, but each sitting reveals more and more secrets that all parties would prefer stay hidden.

Spitting Gold is centered heavily on sibling dynamics with Part 1 of the book focused on Sylvie's perspective and Part 2 focused moreso on Charlotte. The secrets within the Mothe family and de Jacquinot family are peeled back in layers with the time frame denoted by date at the start of each chapter. This unveiling of varied pieces of the puzzle is paced slowly, though Lowkis' writing is accessible.

Each character has distinct flaws to them, with no character taking the lead as a clear protagonist. Lowkis takes the time to make each main character accessible enough for the audience to sympathize with their position, while simultaneously making each character (for me, at least) difficult to outright like. Queer character representation was scattered throughout the book and time period accurate difficulties associated with queerness were included.

This combination resulted in a strange duality where I was engaged while reading, but felt little motivation to pick the book back up after I had stopped for the day. While I can certainly respect Lowkis' work, I think this was simply a matter of this not being the book for me personally.

Overall, I was grateful for the opportunity to read Spitting Gold early, and have hope that it will find its target audience.