It has taken a while to decide what I would like to do with Original Fantasy since the completion of the Priori Podcast and my posts on writing better taken from my mentorship with Isobelle Carmody back in 2012.

While I still haven’t completely decided what my next project is going to be, I do want to throw in the occasional review of a book I’ve really enjoyed. This is going to be a mixed pot! I read wide and it’s going to be a genre mash-up party in here, but that’s the way ahuh-ahuh I like it…

Sharp Edge – What’s the Story, yo?

The fourth in Marianne Delacourt’s award winning series about unconventional PI Tara Sharp, Sharp Edge, launched last year and I just reread it in preparation for the next in the series to drop.

Sharp Edge takes us deeper into Tara’s world, where her PI business is flourishing and continuing to take advantage of her uncanny ability to read people’s auras. As amazing as that sounds, it means that gang warfare and underworld violence are (slightly) higher up her list of priorities than typical boy, money and parent problems. In the latest instalment, she’s tasked with uncovering a shady character in the fashion world, but she’s about to collide with a few dangerous figures from her past.

If you haven’t yet picked up the first in the series, Sharp Shooter was the 2010 winner of the Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel and nominated for the Ned Kelly Award 2010 Best First Crime Novel. It is a killer introduction to Delacourt’s series of ‘funny, sexy, smart crime novels for men and women’ about unorthodox PI Tara Sharp. You can download a copy from a variety of online retailers, including Amazon.com and Twelfth Planet Press.

I’ve love the Tara Sharp books for their easy flow, great pace and plucky main character; Sharp Edge is yet another brilliant installment in the series! What I love most is how Marianne Delacourt develops the series, you get to find out a host more about the secondary characters, in the case of Sharp Edge, her ex-fiance Garth and her teenage charge.

The stakes, though much larger with each book released, never seem to get absurd, and always keeps the books in the right place – more about the character’s relationship with her life and career than with obsessing about men (which is such a breath of fresh air in chick-lit mix genres like this series).

In saying that though, I was a bit annoyed that the cliffhanger for the book was (in my mind) a stupid relationship one, with one of the male character’s being incredibly disrespectful in trying to hem in Tara in a way that many view as romantic but I see as quite manipulative and controlling (and problematic for young readers looking for role models). However this was my only problem with the book.

I couldn’t put it down as I was reading it and I recommend this series to anyone who loves mysteries, crime and a great, light-hearted chick-lit.

I was lucky enough to be able to pose one, all important question to Marianne for the launch of this book:

The descriptions for the aura reads seem so real, does it come from experience? Or maybe colour charts?

I started reading online about auras. Being as the whole concept was inexact and open to interpretation, there was no single definitive colour chart out there. I saw a few and then read a bit more. In the end, I compiled my own, starting from scratch and adding in some nuances like flashes and clumps and shredded bits. I figured that not all auras are robust, and some bleed into each other like melted rainbows. I also thought that auras must vary depending on a person’s current emotional and physical state, so there had to be room for movement and change. Once I had my own colour chart then I referred back to it constantly.

Now to the most pressing question…

As will all awesome books, you can grab your copy of Sharp Edge from iTunes, Amazon.com, Kobo, Google Play Store or Twelfth Planet Press to get ready for the latest instalment in this crime fiction series, which comes packed full of humour, and with a paranormal twist.