Texas Gothic (2011)

4Q 4P

'Texas Gothic' is a YA paranormal mystery/romance that is no where even close to the wildly popular 'Twilight' franchise, and that's a really good thing. Main character Amy (short for Amaryllis) Goodnight is the only "normal" member of her family of psychics and kitchen witches. Her sister Phin (Delphinium) is a brilliant chemistry/physics double major using the scientific method and her lab equipment to suss out paranormal activities. When the two of them watch over their aunt Hyacinth's (sensing a theme here?) farm for the summer, they get caught up in a haunting of a terrifying and personal nature. All the while, Phin is starting to get close to archaeologist Mark, and Amy is spending her time fighting with a brusque yet very attractive rancher named Ben. This book certainly lays the romance on, but Amy and Phin are far from boy-crazy girls or empty shells of characters; they're tough, smart, and self-aware and this is their mystery to solve. If they find love along the way, that's just a bonus. Well-written, with a good female voice and a great sense of humor in the narration, I think this book has just the right mix of romance, mystery, family drama, humor and horror to appeal to a wide range of readers.

A pair of disclaimers: I’m not really the target audience of this book (since I’m not a YA girl). Perhaps countering that, though, I have something of a fan-boy crush on the author since I think she’s a fabulous panelist. If you ever get to see her at a convention, give her a listen.

I liked the book fairly well, but… since comparisons to her other work are inevitable… I didn’t like it as much as I liked her Maggie Quinn books. For some reason, I did not find this book’s Amy Goodnight to be as engaging as Maggie Quinn, and a lot of that boiled down to the narrative voice. I’ll at least grant her this much, considering that both books were written first person from the POV of an 18-19 year old girl, their narrative styles were noticeably different. I guess I just liked Maggie’s voice better.

The other thing that set me against the book from the start was the subject matter. It’s a ghost story. While Maggie is off fighting demons and closing off interdimensional portals, this story is about a ghost haunting a Texas ranch. It was well done, and the ghostly interactions were not overdone, but real life “ghost hunters” annoy the shit out of me. No offense to you personally if you’re one of them, but I have a hard time not crying bullshit on them. As such, I was not primed to enjoy a ghost story.

Now, having said that, it was well done and believable, not so much because the character believed, but because the character did not want to believe. She acknowledged that yes, it could very well be a true ghost out there causing problems, but she did not want that to be true. That was enough to quiet my inner skeptic enough to go along for the ride.

And it was a fun ride. There were heroes and villains, lust and greed, real danger, and real consequences. It was not just a scary weekend listening to stairs creak. It was a little adventure that actually got to the bottom of things.

So, I can actually recommend it to others, but given my pre-existing annoyance with things ghost-related, I probably would not have recommended it to myself. ( )

When Amy Goodnight told her aunt that she and her sister would watch over her ranch for the summer, she didn’t know that it would entail discovering bodies and dealing with a ghost who wants revenge. To complicate things, her hot cowboy neighbor keeps showing up and driving her crazy. As she and her sister Phin try to solve the mysterious ghost sightings, Amy realizes that struggling to be normal in a family of witches might not be worth it.

Rosemary Clement-Moore’s atmospheric, fun paranormal novel about sisters battling ghosts is the epitome of fun summer reading. Clement-Moore’s prose is light and Amy’s narration is conversational. The characters in the novel are exceptionally well-developed and the story is compelling. Apart from some slight pacing problems and a feel that the book could have been a bit briefer, this is an incredibly enjoyable read.

To her credit, Clement-Moore has created a world where the magic feels natural and the characters use it and comprehend it in an authentic way. Nothing about the way the magic is inserted into their world feels clunky or unlikely. Amy and Phin have grown up using magic and science together, and they respect it (though Amy does fight against her own power in her quest to be seen as normal). The supernatural mingles with the natural in this story, as Clement-Moore inserts quite a bit of physical anthropology into her story (this book is the equivalent of a love child between Supernatural and Bones). All of this is done exceedingly well, and it’s clear that Clement-Moore did her research.

There’s something inherently charming about the novel as well. It might be the conversational tone that Amy uses to narrate, or it might be the palpable chemistry between the characters (all of whom are given care and detail–even the minor ones). Whatever it is, this is a very fun read. Although it starts to feel overly-long in the last third, Clement-Moore’s rising action is enough to temper even the most impatient of readers.

Recommended to fans of paranormal ghost stories. Although it’s definitely good for summer reading, it would also work right around Halloween.

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore. Random House Children’s: 2011. Library copy. ( )

The first time Amy Goodnight meets Ben whose family owns att the property around her aunt's ranch, she's in her underwear trying to cope with something else that has gone wrong. The two of them fall into a love/hate relationship. He has issues with her family and their strangeness and she'd like to find someone who can accept that sometimes her family just are that strange.

When an old grave is discovered, she has to bring some long-dormant skills to bear, however this opens a can of worms and things just keep getting stranger.

I liked this one, Amy is very much the conciliator and one who keeps the truth from being too known. The family witchcrafting is mostly secret and kept that way by disbelief. I liked how it was handled. The relationship was well handled as well but there were times that I wasn't sure where the two were going with it all.

Entertaining, light read. Interesting world building. Would like to read more set in this world. ( )

So, hooray for Texas Gothic! This is how you write paranormal YA, although the focus wasn’t so much on the romance as it was on the actual story.

First of all, I love the Goodnight girls. Amy could be a cousin to Maggie Quinn, as they’re both snarky, level-headed psychic girl detectives with a knack for uncovering trouble, but she steps out in her own in a big way. I like how Amy keeps her ideas for normality in check with her world of the supernatural; while she’s not fond of being sucked into ghost plots and relying on magic, she does find the trappings of the supernatural cozy. She finds a way to reconcile both of these worlds without having abandoned one for the other and it completely works. Her sister Phin tends to agree more with the supernatural, but her use of SCIENCE! to enhance and better her dealings with hosts and haunted sites made her one of my favorite characters. I loved it every time Phin went off on a technobabble about how her gadgets worked.

While Amy falls into the trap of the “Slap-slap-kiss” trope with designated love interest Ben, I did like a lot of their interactions and banter with each other. Ben does come off as unapproachable at first, but as the two interact more, he does really care about Amy and about his ranch. The things that were mysterious about him were mysterious for good reason, not to build up useless tension that doesn’t go anywhere. I liked the fact that they were able to work together and be friendly, instead of just bickering until they finally made out.

Also, I loved the UT dig team. The fact that majority of the members, save for the non-anthropology students, are game to let two girls with reputations for being ‘weird’ test out ghost-hunting equipment. They’re a great side cast to the story.

The use of how magic works here draws on traditional spells, but works for Clement-Moore’s personal use for the Goodnights. (She notes that none of the spells were real.) There’s very clear rules about how spells are used, but stand out and they don’t feel like they’ve been copied and pasted from an amateur Wiccan site.

The setting really works too. The big ranch setting, with the number of historical conflicts make Texas a perfect back-drop for a creepy ghost story and the number of legends that Amy picks up on feel like they’ve been ingrained in the local consciousness for some time. The only thing I didn’t like about the main ghost legend essential to the plot—the Mad Monk of the McCulloch Ranch—never got explained fully. And while I liked the use of families with long-lasting grudges, particularly the McCulloch/Kelly feud, it’s never really used beyond setting up the antagonists.

Texas Gothic was the most fun I had reading a book this summer—I had a huge grin on my face the whole time, and I really got into the story. I have nitpicks about the plot, but it didn’t spoil my overall enjoyment. If you haven’t read Rosemary Clement-Moore’s books before, I HIGHLY recommend starting with this.
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