Review: Double Cross - Carolyn Crane

Series: The Disillusionists Trilogy #2
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 326
Date Published: 2010
Source: Bought

Justine Jones lived her life as a fearful hypochondriac until she was lured into the web of a mysterious mastermind named Packard, who gifts her with extraordinary mental powers—dooming her to fight Midcity’s shadowy war on paranormal crime in order to find the peace she so desperately craves.

But now serial killers with unheard-of skills are terrorizing the most powerful beings in Midcity, including mastermind Packard and his oldest friend and worst enemy, Midcity’s new mayor, who has the ability to bend matter itself to his will. 

As the body count grows, Justine faces a crisis of conscience as she tests the limits of her new powers and faces an impossible choice between two flawed but brilliant men—one on a journey of redemption, the other descending into a pit of moral depravity.

My thoughts:

Crane does have quite the imagination. Justine the hypochondriac is fighting crime by putting fear into people. She is not alone in this but have others like her around her. And then there are the high caps who have real powers, not like Justine who got them from someone else. The high caps have all sorts of powers like telepathy to forming stone. The world is fascinating and the general populace does not know the high caps exist, some believe, some don't.

I would love to go on and talk about the end now but I will hold it in. Justin is, I do not know how to describe her really because she is not your ordinary heroine. The power of zinging out her fear keeps her from going under. And she still battles her fear of dying by the disease that killed her mother, and just worrying about everything. She is not a kick-ass heroine in that sense, she is more the  shadow behind the corner that might be out to get you.

The men then. Justine is dating Otto, a hypochondriac like her but he is also a high cap and mayor of the town. He is, I do not know, I was pretty much all over him in book 2 but in this book I slowly switched team. To Packard, oh yes the former crime boss who was imprisoned in his deli and then helped his merry band of Disillusionists to fight crime. Here was just so nice and just let her be her. Team kebab it is.

But now I really need to address the end, omg omg omg omg omg omg! I knew what people were saying, that there was some huge cliffie and therefore I waited a bit with reading the book. Now I have finally read it and yes the end just hit me over the head, and then it kept hitting me until I went into shock. It was..epic, what a genius ending.

Still I do not want to scare you, it was not one of those cliffhangers that make you pull your hair out and hate the world for not having the next book. It was a different sort of cliffhanger that left me in shock, but I can wait since the end was just that, an ending you could live with (while screaming inside of course).

I do realise that I have said nothing about the story. Ok, there are doubts of what they are doing is right. There are people killing high caps. Justine getting into her relationship with Otto and all that jazz.

Conclusion.
I am still pretty much dazed from reading the book. It was truly one of the better endings out there. This is such a different sort of UF so give it a go.

Rating:

It went from good to mind-blowing those last few pages. You better just read it

Cover:

Good