UF Review: Finding Magic by Stacia Kane

Finding Magic 

by Stacia Kane 

(Downside Ghosts #0.5)

When eighteen-year-old Chess Putnam is offered the chance to train with a special team of investigators known as the Black Squad, she feels torn. She’s never been a team player and hates how one male Inquisitor condescends to “the new kid.” But at her first bloody crime scene, she gets a taste for investigation—and is hooked on the high. Though the seasoned Inquisitors consider the series of ghost murders random events, Chess starts to detect a pattern. Is a psycho killer summoning ghosts from the City of Eternity and using them as murder weapons? As Chess gets closer to the dark truth, she puts herself in grave danger and risks losing everything she’s fought so hard for.

REVIEW:

Even though Finding Magic is a prequel in the Downside Ghosts series, I think that existing fans of the series will get more enjoyment out of it than someone that is new to the series. The reason is that we get to see a younger Chess and how she starts her downward slid into drug addiction and it gives you more insite into how she could have let it happen.

The younger Chess is really just a slightly different version of the Chess we all know. Instead of her reaching for her pill box when her past memories get the best of her, she is reaching for a flask filled with vodka.

We follow Chess through her first unofficial Church case while she is training with the Black Squad. She doesn't want to work with the squad because let's face it, Chess is not a team player and is happier when she is working alone. Chess also meets Elder Griffin in this novella and we get to see how their relationship gets it's start.

The young Chess is not new to Downside but since she is not a Church employee yet she is still living on campus while she does her training so she doesn't have her own place in Downside yet. And when she visits Downside my heart skips a beat, waiting and hoping to get a sneak peek at a younger Terrible.

Finding Magic, it's a Downside Ghosts fan MUST read.