Okay, well, I’m not sure what I was expecting but wow. This story immediately captivated me. It starts off with 16-year-old Nairna Liath traveling with her father. He is a con-man always looking for a get rich quick scheme. Set in Scotland in the early 1900s, life isn’t exactly easy for these two. Nairna’s father schemes away while she reads tarot cards for a little bit of money. Soon the reader finds out that Nairna is the real deal. She is a physical medium who can cross from this realm into the spiritual one. She faces the possibly of being branded a witch, moving to a new country, and deciding between facing her destiny and hiding away from the world forever. As her identity changes, the now Nora Grey faces off against scientists, spiritualists, and her own family who doubt her abilities. Nora is the embodiment of female rage - with the men and women in her life attempting to control and make money from her talents. She often feels confused, angry, and disheartened. Nora’s story really held me in a vise grip. With dual timelines, and with the question of how these two stories connected I was deeply invested in how this story would end. This story is tragic, and maddening. I enjoyed the supernatural aspects, the dual timelines and POVs, and the beautiful writing. I could tell that the author really put some thought into setting the perfect historical scene for the reader. If you love historical fiction, magical realism, and paranormal vibes then you will love this book! I would include a content warning about birth trauma & death.

A young woman with a genuine gift for communicating with the spirit. Originally named **Nairna Liath**, she assumes the identity of Nora Grey after fleeing to a secluded community near Boston. Nora is courageous and determined, navigating the challenges of spiritualism, manipulation, and betrayal[. Her journey is deeply intertwined with her grandmother Lottie Liath's story of imprisonment and exploitation in a notorious asylum.

A haunting dual-time line (1901 and 1860s) story about spiritualism and power.
Her father peddles the half-starved Nora Grey (not her name at the start of the story) around fairs as a fortune teller. Although her act is a fraud, she also has natural psychic powers which are spotted by an eminent member of society into psychic research. Nora’s life is transformed, but when her powers taken an unexpected turn, the havoc she caused makes her look like a witch. Driven out of her native Scotland, Nora and her father travel to a sister research organization in America. Once there, Nora forms an unexpected allowance with a celebrated American psychic. Between them they summon Nora’s spirit guide in the ghostly form of Lottie, Nora’s grandmother…which is when the story really catches fire.
I found this to be an absorbing read. I can be lukewarm about dual timeline stories, but it works really well here. I especially enjoyed Lottie’s story – she was utterly believable and I was so rooting for her, especially as she was right and the men in control of her life were wrong. The book got stronger as it went on, and the partial redemption of Nora’s father was particularly touching. Lottie’s fate was thrilling and Nora’s decisions would have made her grandmother proud.
On a side note, there was the odd word that jarred a little as out of place for the time and place, such as the mention of throwing out ‘trash’ from a 19th century asylum. I feel pretty sure it wouldn’t have been in common usage in mid-19th century Wales as it is more of an Americanism and even in the current day in the UK we refer to rubbish rather than trash. But this was a minor (and somewhat pedantic) point so not to dwell on it.

I was attracted to this book primarily from the title as I love books that explore the paranormal and metaphysical. Nora Grey begins with the story of Nairna Liath, a poor Scottish woman in 1901 who travels with her father around Scotland reading tarot cards and pretending to summon spirits. It's all a hoax for survival until she is brought in to be tested by a spiritual society and has a vision that is real. In between Nairna's story is the story of her grandmother Lottie Liath, who had similar spiritual abilities, and was locked up and tortured in an asylum for the insane 40 years earlier following the death of her husband.

Beginning each chapter are clips from news articles about the asylum or Nairna (now known as Nora) spanning from the 1860s to our present day. This format was interesting because it felt like someone actually researching her in order to write this "entirely true story"

The aspects of the paranormal that this book explored were very interesting since this is not a typical story about ghosts or poltergeists, it's an entirely new angle on what "spirits" might be which I found to be a very cool concept. I also appreciated that woven into the story about the paranormal is the story of how women who were different, stood up for themselves, or made men angry in any way could be deemed "insane" and subjected to horrible abuse and gaslighting (abuses like this still exist today). This book also explores the commercial exploitation of women who have any kind of talent.

There are several strong women characters in this (and one man who supports Nairna although he doesn't appear much) who have completely rejected men, and while one of them still participates in commercial exploitation, it's how she is able to survive and prevent men from taking advantage of her.

One disappointing aspect of this book is some of the viewpoints that switched between Lottie and Nairna/Nora became very repetitive and didn't advance the plot much beyond "horrible men can do horrible things to women and get away with it." The intro media blurbs also hint at what is going to come next in the upcoming chapters and some of it ended up not being what I expected, like those bits hyped something up that didn't end up happening.

This book is a good read for folks who are interested in both historical fiction and magical realism. It reminded me a little of The Death of Jane Lawrence with alternative explanations of what "spirits" could be.

Many thanks to Kensington Publishing and to NetGalley for this ARC to review. This review is my honest opinion.

If you liked Square of Sevens or The London Seance Society, you should definitely make this as one of your next reads!

This book pulls you into a world of magic and mysticism—a reprieve from the mire of reality where we follow two women connected not by time nor proximity, as they search for freedom and autonomy in a world where the cards are not always in their favor.

World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic killed millions worldwide and helped create the spiritualist craze. In this book, a young woman travels the backroads of Scotland with her father, while he convinces gullible and grieving relatives that he can contact their loved ones on the other. His talent is all smoke and mirrors, but his daughter's is all to real. Atmospheric and absorbing