Publishers Weekly
In this bloated series launch from the prolific Pike, when Jessie accompanies her graduating class to Las Vegas for the weekend, she meets a mysterious man with a knack for winning at cards. Soon after, Jessie is killed, but she returns to life to learn that she's a witch with superhuman abilities, able to dwell in two different worlds at once. What follows is a muddied sequence of events involving alternate realities and people with multiple counterparts. As Jessie learns the truth about her heritage, reconciles with her boyfriend, and fights to save the daughter she never knew she had, she gets further entangled in a millennia-old battle between two opposing witch factions. Readers may struggle with Jessie's convoluted narration ("Anyway, the first time we had sex, that was important. It had been in the shower, like I told him, or rather, just after we took a shower. But he was right about one thing—he had not spent time in the shower washing the oil off his hands"), and Pike's premise is needlessly complicated. A chaotic jumble of supernatural tropes. Agent: Jennifer Unter, the Unter Agency. Ages 14–up. (Nov.)
Kirkus Reviews
Jessica Ralle expected her graduation trip to Las Vegas to go smoothly--a little bit of drinking, some entertainment and a smidge of gambling before going off to UCLA--but…. The plan derails when she meets Russ, a dangerous man who shows her the arts of blackjack and of a mysterious new card game, 22. After blacking out when she is locked in a freezer, Jessie wakes up in the morgue and discovers she is in a different world, one in which she has special abilities built into her genetic sequence. When Jessie learns a sinister organization has kidnapped the daughter she bore in the alternate world, she embarks on a mission of vengeance to recover her child. Pike's knack for melodrama is in evidence, but the worldbuilding never takes off here. Jessica adapts to her dual nature much too easily and adjusts to her role as mother with little disconnect. The main villain, a holdover from the Roman Empire, is laughably evil, and readers will find her Achilles' heel to be utterly banal. Underdeveloped characters, a dull plot with high page count and hollow moralizing make for very little to recommend. (Thriller. 14 & up)
School Library Journal
Gr 10 Up—Jessie Ralle starts out as a typical teenager with a complicated love life. She and some friends, including her ex, all head to Las Vegas to celebrate graduation. Strange things start to happen, culminating in Jessie's getting murdered and mysteriously brought back to life-with superpowers. As if that weren't enough, she finds herself in a parallel version of Vegas. Luckily, her long-lost father turns up to explain everything. Less luckily, there is a lot of explaining to do. It turns out that Jessie is a witch, or a human with superpowered genetics. Now that she has "connected" to her true nature (by dying), she will start experiencing life in dual universes: one day in the regular world followed by the same day in the witch world. There are also two versions of herself, Jessie and Jessica, and Jessica, the witch version, has a baby named Lara who has been kidnapped by a rival group of witches who are trying to take over the world and … so on. The complications of the two universes and the fact that all of the characters have two versions of themselves make the already-convoluted plot completely unmanageable. Also off-putting is the way that the rules of Witch World seem to be inconsistently applied and the characters, including the protagonist, are frequently unsympathetic. Though the book is written for teens, the characters talk and act like adults, and there is no shortage of sex and violence, making the novel most appropriate for older teens. Even the most dedicated Pike fans may have trouble making their way through this messy tome.—Eliza Langhans, Hatfield Public Library, MA
