Book Review: Play the Fool by Lina Chern

About the Book

For Katie True, a keen gut and quick wit are just tools of the trade. After a failed attempt at adulting in Chicago, she’s back in the suburbs living a bit too close to her overbearing parents, jumping from one dead-end job to the next, and flipping through her tarot deck for guidance. Then along comes Marley.

Mysterious, worldly, and comfortable in her own skin, Marley takes a job at the mall where Katie peddles Russian tchotchkes. The two just get each other. Marley doesn’t try to fix Katie’s life or pretend to be someone she’s not, and Katie thinks that with Marley’s friendship, she just might make it through this rough patch after all. Until the day when Katie, having been encouraged by Marley to practice soothsaying, reads the cards for someone who stumbles into her shop. But when she sneaks a glance at his phone, she finds more than intel to improve her clairvoyance. She finds a photo. Of Marley. With a gunshot wound to the head.

The bottom falls out of Katie’s world. Her best friend is dead? Who killed her? She quickly realizes there are some things her tarot cards can’t foresee, and she must put her razor-sharp instincts to the ultimate test. But Katie’s recklessness lands her in the crossfire of a threat she never saw coming. Now she must use her street smarts and her inner Strength card to solve Marley’s murder—or risk losing everything.

My Review

I really really liked this one! Chern did a fantastic job crafting a main character who by rights should have irritated me but instead I found endearing and quirky in an utterly unexpected way. She paired that floundering protagonist with a delightfully broken detective, and the result was magical.

I enjoyed the way tarot and psychic elements were woven into the tale without ever turning it into a book about tarot or psychics. I found the characterizations fabulous. Marley was the perfect foil and a magnificent kickoff to the action. The supporting characters were a delight, most particularly Owen and Max, and I loved watching this entire cast interact because I never knew what they were going to do next.

This was a fantastic tale and I am definitely looking for more from Chern…