Acts of Violet Lady

Hi, friends! I am so excited to be back with the first new review in a year. I’ve missed doing this so much, and honestly I’ve missed reading in general too. So, without further ado, today I will be reviewing Acts of Violet by Margarita Montimore. This is Montimore’s second novel after Oona Out of Order. I heard amazing things about Oona, but never read it myself, so I was excited to try the second novel by this breakout author. To accompany today’s review I made a Violet Lady!

Violet Lady Recipe

2oz Gin

1oz Creme de Violette

1oz Lemon Juice

0.5oz Egg Whites

1 Grape Bottle Cap*

*Grape bottle cap is optional.

Crush bottle cap candy until it turns into a fine dust. Then, in a cocktail shaker without ice, combine all ingredients and shake for approximately 10 seconds. Next, pour into a coupe glass and enjoy!

This is a really nice, light cocktail. I personally didn’t love it because I’m not a huge fan of gin and it is very floral. However, I thought this was a beautiful drink and would definitely try it again making modifications for my preferences. Today’s special ingredient is a grape bottle cap. In the novel, bottle caps are Violet and Sasha’s favourite candy and a part of their BBB/222 motto. Due to the creme de violette, the grape candy doesn’t really affect the taste of the cocktail at all so it is a truly optional ingredient. So unfortunately, this isn’t a drink for me, but if gin is your spirit of choice you’ll love this!

Acts of Violet Synopsis

(from book cover)

“Nearly a decade ago, iconic magician Violet Volk performed her greatest trick yet: vanishing mid-act. Though she hasn’t been seen since, her hold on the public hasn’t wavered. While Violet sought out the spotlight, her sister, Sasha, ever the responsible one, took over their mother’s salon and built a quiet life for her daughter, Quinn. But Sasha can never seem to escape her sister’s orbit or her memories of their unresolved, tumultuous relationship. Then there’s Cameron Frank, determined to finally get his big break hosting a podcast devoted to all think Violet—though keeping his job hinges on an exclusive interview with Sasha, the last person who wants to talk to him.

As the tenth anniversary of Violet’s final performance approaches, the podcast picks up steam and Cameron’s pursuit of Sasha becomes increasingly intrusive. He isn’t the only one wondering what secrets she might be keeping: Quinn, loyal to the aunt she always idolized, is doing her own investigating. Meanwhile, Sasha begins to experience an unsettling series of sleepwalking episodes and coincidences, which all lead back to Violet. Pushed to her emotional limits, Sasha must finally confront the most painful truths about her sister, and herself, even at the risk of losing everything.”

Review

“Because nothing was real with her. Her life, her career, it was all a series of illusions.”

Well, to say the least this novel was disappointing. I was all psyched to get back into the blog and then boom first book I choose is a flop. I know I could have just picked a different book, but that seemed untruthful and, honestly, I had already planned the cocktail and taken a bunch of pictures. That being said, let’s start with what I liked about Acts of Violet.

First, it was a really quick and easy read largely because of the found document aspect of the novel mixed with the podcast excerpts and regular chapters. I also really enjoyed the podcast element. I LOVE podcasts (shoutout True Crime and Cocktails for being the best ever), so I was intrigued how Montimore was going to handle this concept. And overall, I thought she did a good job with it. The podcast excerpts sounded real even though I was reading a transcript of it and not listening. I’ve heard amazing things about the audiobook of this novel, and I think the podcast chapters would probably be really interesting to hear in that format.

I was also intrigued about the use of numerology in Acts of Violet. The sisters use 222 as a sign off and this motif comes up throughout the novel as a kind of guiding light for Sasha. So, I did a little research to see what 222 means in numerology. 2’s represent a fiercely feminine presence, grace and power, intuition, and partnership (maybe even sisterhood?). All of these ideas are themes in this novel, especially in regard to Violet herself. Furthermore, the second card in traditional tarot is the High Priestess. Interestingly, Noriko describes Violet as being like a high priestess in her episode of the podcast. This seemed too intentional to just be coincidence, so I was genuinely impressed with these little numerology tidbits laced throughout the novel.

Ok, so that’s it for positives. My first and biggest negative is that I just hated the characters. Violet? Terrible. Sasha? Horrible. Gabe? Absolutely not. I kept waiting for something to redeem these characters and show me a more empathetic side of them, but it never came. The only character I could kind of stand was Quinn. But even she felt a bit tokenistic. While the LGBTQIA+ representation in Acts of Violet was incorporated nicely for most characters, Quinn just felt forced. It was like reading what someone thinks a Millennial or Gen Z sounds like, but clearly has never spoken to someone from this demographic.

Moving back to the really negative aspects of the characters is Sasha. She’s supposed to be the main character, but I wanted to stop reading every time she was on the page. I just wanted to yell at her to get over herself. “I’m SPECIAL so therapy will never work on me!” *insert eyeroll emoji here* Shut up Sasha everyone can benefit from therapy. If you’ve read my past reviews you’ll know that I hate when everything that goes wrong in a character’s life happens because they’re acting stupid. And that’s pretty much Sasha’s whole thing. Every issue she ever has has been completely projected onto others, and she could’ve been much happier had she decided to be honest with herself and others.

Another aspect of the characters that bothered me was Sasha and Gabe’s weird insistence that Quinn should want to have children. It was extremely cringey, and, frustratingly, was never resolved. Overall, this random storyline felt thrown in, uncomfortable, and meaningless. One positive note in relation to the characters is that the dialogue was realistic. People had believable conversations that played out similar to how an actual conversation would go. So, despite disliking the characters there are aspects that shine in this story.

Another thing that felt meaningless was the constant references to the time period. This one may be completely a personal preference, but it felt so overdone to me. I understand that we’re switching between time periods repeatedly, but I feel that the literal date on all of the documents, etc. was enough for me to know when I was in the 80s/90s or 2018. It just felt redundant to throw in random references about the time period that added nothing to the story. Again, this was an aspect of the novel that felt forced and awkward to me.

And finally, the ending of Acts of Violet was one of my least favourite endings of any novel I’ve done for this blog or read in the last 5 years. To describe it quickly the ending was a deus ex machina. Basically, it inexplicably and quickly wrapped everything up and felt like a huge copout. She’d spent 300 pages making us wonder about what happened to Violet to then have it be such an underwhelming and disappointing conclusion. It made the whole novel feel like a rip off, and dropped this book down an entire star for me.

Well, there’s my unfortunate thoughts on my first novel back. Overall, it wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, but it’s definitely not making any top lists for me this year. The novel shined in all the little things, but lacked where it really mattered. And the ending left me disappointed and annoyed. So, I don’t know if I’ll be recommending Acts of Violet to anyone right now, but if you’re interested in magicians, podcasts, and don’t mind a deus ex machina situation this one might be for you! As always, even if you don’t read the book let me know if you try the cocktail at your next party!

My Rating:

Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading The After Midnight Library and The Final [Corpse] Revival of Opal and Nev if you liked this one!

Teghann

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