Kate RacculiaRecensioner

Reading this book was an eerie experience for me, because I recognized the setting from the blurb. I went to this same festival, at the same creepy hotel, about ten years earlier than the author did. No murders, when I was there; but it was definitely a Thing.

In real life, it was the Concord Resort Hotel, fading sibling of Grossingers (you know Grossingers as the inspiration for the hotel resort in "Dirty Dancing"). I remember rehearsing in a giant ballroom under a dim chandelier. One of the boys in the group "picked" a few glass crystals from the chandelier and gave them out to girls. I kept that crystal in my window for years until it fell one day and shattered while I was studying.

Smart and sassy, a bit spooky, wonderful characters, great dialogue, and best of all, the value of friendship.

I don't really know how I feel about this. I loved most of it but what I didn't love definitely stood out. I am going to give this four stars but I might drop this down to a 3.5 after a couple of days.

*Actual rating 2.5/5*

Well, this was... messy? I don't even know anymore... Tuesday Mooney Wore Black started from a great premise: billionaire treasure hunt with a quirky and mismatched groups of people? I was sold! Unfortunately, the more I read the less I enjoyed it, and by the time I got to the end I was speechless and not in a good way.

The idea for this was absolutely brilliant, and I loved the initial set up and mystery. As the story progressed, however, it started to get more and more complicated. I usually enjoy a good complex mystery, and even mixing up elements from various genres in one story, making it more original and avoiding the usual tropes. Here, though, it felt like the book was trying to do too many things at the same time, and didn't leave itself space to do any one of them fully.

Character development was also hit-and-miss for me. Tuesday and her neighbour Dorry were definitely my favourite characters and they both grow loads throughout the book, which I loved to see. The rest of the cast... meh. There were way too many characters, some of which really felt like little more than placeholders, so much so that I could hardly remember their names let alone why they were there in the first place. And even with the most important supporting characters, by the time we finally got to the ending they fell completely flat.

Like, I'm sorry but HOW did no one do anything when Nathaniel attacked Tuesday?? I would have been waaaay more upset at my so-called friends if they'd reacted the way Dex, Archie or any of the other finalists had than Tuesday seemed to be.

Overall, I was really sad not to have liked this more, but there were too many inconsistencies for me to fully enjoy it. I definitely seem to be in the minority here though, so if the blurb intrigues you give it a go and see what you think!

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

2023 book #33. 2019. Tuesday is a loner in Boston with a decent job but few friends. Then an eccentric millionaire dies and leaves behind a citywide puzzle to solve and Tuesday gets in the game and finds happiness. Read for my book club. A good mystery and a fun read.

Kind of campy and overdone, except that sounds delightful and I think this book didn't quite hit that mark either. I had a skim through the other reviews and hit on twee, and oh yes that is the correct word. With half attention and in the right mood it's entertaining and cute, but I have wishes for what any one of the many ingredients could have been.

A total page-turner -- in fact, I stayed up so late reading it that, about halfway in, I had to skip to the end, so I could know how it came out and could go to sleep. Came back the next day and finished reading the middle part, and it was just as much fun even though I knew the end. Now I'm curious to read more of this writer's work -- this felt like a first book, a little bit explain-y and backstory-y. But that doesn't mar the fun plot and the evocative descriptions.

Audiobook 3.5 stars. Started out with a lot of potential but didn’t deliver.

Heard about this book in the What Should I Read Next podcast. Enjoyed.

I do believe Tuesday talks to merely one ghost.

The first 1/2 was 5 stars.. then I'm not sure what happened but the pace seemed to slow.. there was constant buildup of secrets with an extended period of time of no reveal. When the reveals came they really weren't all that thrilling and told in "wrap up, here's what you missed" kind of way.

This book had a really likeable cast of characters and a throw-back plot. Very fun read.

Fun, campy novel with great characters and a good mystery.

This had a much different feel than I was expecting, but once I adjusted to the much more contemporary feel, it was fun to settle in to. Puzzles are fun. It was also more warmhearted than I thought it would be. Fun twists and turns. Great characters. As a newer New Englander it was also fun to be immersed in the references to Boston.

Tuesday Mooney is a researcher at a hospital in Boston who looks into the backgrounds of prospective donors. When an eccentric millionaire, Vincent Pryce, dies at a fundraiser, it kicks off a city-wide treasure hunt for the deceased's fortune. Tuesday teams up with her best friend Dex, her teenage neighbor and mentee Dorry, and Arches, the charming son of another first family of Boston.

There is a lot going on in this book with the treasure hunt a fun main plot around which various subplots orbit. For one thing, Tuesday is dealing with her best friend Abby going missing (and presumably dead) when they were teenagers. She can still hear Abby's voice talking with her and advising her as an adult. Arches, meanwhile, has famously had his wealthy father go missing in a boating incident 6 years earlier, the truth of which is something he is grappling with. And that's just scratching the surface.

I think the many stories going on within the novel make it needlessly complicated. But it's still a fun mystery/adventure/romance with a lot of great Boston details.

The quirky title and description drew me in and the book got off to a promising start but midway through it all went downhill for me. Part of this could be due to the fact that I read the book on my smartphone which was a challenge (via Hoopla) and so I've bumped my original 2-star rating up to a 3-stars. The storyline is good and the characters had the potential to keep my interest, but it felt like the novel could have used more revision to smooth out the plot complexities and character's experiences which got choppy toward the end.

I had such high hopes for this book because I loved Bellweather Rhapsody, but unfortunately this didn't quite live up to my own hype. The story started out really strong for me. I loved all the quirky characters and was intrigued by the game, but the plot started to lose steam about midway. Even though I no longer felt invested by this point, I decided to finish the book just to see if the mystery would pay off. The ending was satisfactory, but it felt like work getting there. I think this would have been a better book if it were tighter. A good 50-75 pages being chopped off could have made all the difference. Certainly not a bad book, I just didn't love it.

How much fun was this book? I had a blast reading it; there are very pale shades of Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookshop to it, although it's an entirely different beast. Scavenger hunts! Unsolved mysteries! Lost fortunes! Secret codes!

Enough exclamation points - it was a thoroughly enjoyable adventure with an engaging cast of characters and the closest to unreliable narrators (not really) that I can come without hating a book. The narrator is reliable, but so much of the information she gets is not. There are stories within stories and games within games and the author does a phenomenal job putting it all together in a way that doesn't leave the reader behind. Racculia also scores points for combining brutal violence, a happy ending, and poetic justice in a way that I was willing to buy without a blink.

There was only 1 thing that left me hanging - a very minor plot point that was never addressed:

[spoiler]There's a letter sent by the deceased, shown to the reader exactly as it looks with the caveat that his typewriter was old and inconsistent. But it wasn't - there was a code "Tell your mother I love her". But the coded message is never brought up, and it's never mentioned. It's like it wasn't there, but it was and it's killing me.[/spoiler]

This is the kind of book you pick up when you just want to surrender a few hours to having an adventurous good time.½

This was a charming and delightful mystery, in large part because it gave more than equal time to its charming and delightful characters. I listened to this on a long road trip with my husband, and we both enjoyed it. The narrator, Lauren Fortgang, did a marvelous job at bringing the characters to life. I’ll be looking for a sequel, and also for other books read by this narrator.½

This mystery (and more) was a craftily layered treat. Read my full review here.

WHAT'S TUESDAY MOONEY TALKS TO GHOSTS ABOUT?
When Tuesday Mooney isn't big on socializing—she seems to be a fantastic conversationalist, witty and smart—but she'd rather spend time on her own after work, with few exceptions. But even her best friend has to initiate conversations, she just doesn't do that kind of thing. Tuesday is a researcher for a hospital charity—she knows Boston's upper crust in ways few do. She has a well-documented dossier on them all and knows just how to get money out of them.

Tuesday has a neighbor, Dorry, who is an apprentice of sorts. Dorry's a younger teen who lost her mother recently in an automobile accident. Her father is doing his best, but he can't be everything she needs and provide for them. Dorry was fascinated by this woman in her building who wore black all the time and kept to herself. They run into each other one day and bond quickly. They soon have a weekly time together ("Tuesday Thursdays") and Tuesday tutors Dorry in school—and important things like 1980's-early 2000 music, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The X-Files.

At a charity event Tuesday's working at, a particular wealthy man—Vincent Pryce—dies shortly before Tuesday gets to meet him. Pryce rather enjoyed his coincidental name, and played into it. In addition to making gobs of money and doing a lot of charity work, he collected the macabre—particularly things associated with Edgar Allen Poe and that other Vincent. He was a bit of a showman and after his death, had arranged to announce sort of a giant scavenger hunt in the city—inviting individuals and teams to play along to be given the chance to become an heir.

Like many Bostonians, Tuesday and Dorry are intrigued. With some help from her neighbor, Tuesday pours her research strength into the project and leaps to an early lead—bringing along an old friend and a new ally (assuming she can trust him).

That's really all I can say at this point—other than to throw in, that like Samuel Westing before him, Vincent Pryce has a hidden agenda to his game. As we watch Tuesday, Dorry, and so many others compete, secrets are revealed. (that's a horribly inadequate way to say it, but I'm tripping over myself to avoid spoiling anything)

CONVERSING WITH SPECTERS?
So how literal is this title? Does our titular protagonist chat with the spirits of the departed? Maybe.

The book will eventually take a position on the issue, but it's going to take its time on it, letting the reader ponder that a bit. Now there are times when I want a book to be crystal clear—supernatural things happen, supernatural beings go around doing things. Or—supernatural things are mumbo jumbo. But every now and then I like a book that deals with the ambiguity well—Tuesday might be talking to ghosts, Tuesday might have a healthy and active imagination, Tuesday might be dealing with trauma. It might be all three and more.

Tuesday's neighbor, Dorry has no idea about Tuesday and ghosts. But almost more than anything, Dorry wants to see and interact with the ghost of her mother. At one point, she discovers that among Pryce's collection of oddities are a pair of glasses that can enable the wearer to see ghosts. This becomes her motivation for participating in the game—sure, money would be nice for college and to help her father—but those glasses...

HOW'S THE NARRATION?
Lauren Fortgang was delightful. There was just something about the way she handled the narrative portions that made this a blast to listen to. Her character work—especially with Tuesday and Dorry—was great, too. There's a certain sense of fun and play to the text, and she brought that out in a way that was particularly effective.

I enjoyed Fortgang's work on the Dahlia Moss audiobooks, and I was glad to listen to her again—I think she did better here, for what it's worth.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT TUESDAY MOONEY TALKS TO GHOSTS?
I had so much fun listening to this—while doing so, things at work didn't allow me as much time to listen as I'm accustomed to, so there was a bit of agony involved as the suspense built.

I barely described the characters, and had to leave off so many. But I just don't have the space. Pryce's widow, for example, is a wonderful character who should get her own novella to star in. Tuesday's new ally is a mystery in himself—and won't stop surprising you until the book is over. I could keep going here, but I won't. I would love to have a long conversation with Racculia to talk about character design, more than most authors I've read recently. I'd love to know how she goes about it.

I'm not sure about the pacing of the whole thing, and I think there could've been one or two more moves in the game. But those issues really only occurred to me after I was done—in the moment, I was too busy enjoying myself to notice.

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts was a lot of fun to read, filled with characters I want to spend more time with—I really don't need a story, maybe just see them sitting around a table talking about what's going on in their lives. The novel is rarely what you think it is going to be—and not just at the beginning. I really enjoyed it.½

3.5 stars
Slice of life stuff isn't my favorite form of story telling, but this wasn't that bad. It's one of those books you remember reading at some point and vaguely wonder if the author wrote another one featuring the same characters, but then you'll forget for years that you read the story only to wonder about whether author might have written another book in the same series. It's that kind of a book.

A delightful romp, an engaging beach read. I enjoyed the references to Bostonland, especially the oblique Mooninite panic

What a thoroughly enjoyable book! The problem is, I cannot categorize it at all. I thought it had a bit of a YA fell, but the protagonist is 30. It is a bit reminiscent of “From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler.” It’s part suspense, part social commentary about wealth and death, but not in a “serious” or ponderous manner. I don’t know. I just liked it.

4.75 stars, I loved this book. I knew I was going to love this book from the start. One of my favorite characters of all time is Wednesday Addams and how is Tuesday not Wednesday all grown up. I also love a book where a group of people compete in a game like Ready Player One and this is like that. If anyone who reads this knows of any more books like RPO or this please leave me a comment.