Review: Texas Gothic by Rosemary-Clement Moore

Title & Author: Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement Moore
Genre & Series: Young adult, Stand-alone?   

Published on July 12, 2011 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Hardcover, 416 pages

Where did I get the book: Bought it
                                                         
Blurb: Amy Goodnight's family is far from normal. She comes from a line of witches, but tries her best to stay far outside the family business. Her summer gig? Ranch-sitting for her aunt with her wacky but beautiful sister. Only the Goodnight Ranch is even less normal than it normally is. Bodies are being discovered, a ghost is on the prowl, and everywhere she turns, the hot neighbor cowboy is in her face.

Review:  I first heard about this book at the Romantic Times book convention. I was there attending the Teen day event, and one of the many authors there for the event was Mrs. Clement Moore.  She was reading an excerpt from Texas Gothic, and from that point on I was hooked. While she was reading it, I couldn't stop smiling and grinning like an dum-dum. Texas Gothic is paranormal young adult novel, that has both ghosts and witches. The novel starts out with Amy house sitting for her aunt while she's away on a trip to China. Amy thought her entire summer was gonna be boring and non-eventful while tending to chores on the farm. Things starts to get crazy, when an archeological dig near the farm unearths human remains, and Amy begins to see ghosts. A ghost that seems not to be haunting the farm area but Amy herself. Amy comes from a line of witches, and all she ever wanted was to be normal, and pretend that magic wasn't real. Well in order to get rid of this ghost, Amy is going to have to rely on her magical roots.

The story takes place in Texas hill County, near Austin. The paranormal aspect of the book was subtle, while the main focus of the book was solving the ghost mystery. The author did a great job in mending Texas history, with the plot and the background history of the characters. Readers can definitely tell that the author is a Texas native. Amy's character was fun and snarky, I love that in characters I read about. There are a lot of great/funny dialogue between Amy and the characters throughout the book (between her sister, Phin and the love interest Ben).  Between all the ghost hunting that happens in the book, one of the subplot involved is the relationship between Amy and Ben, who is kinda like their rival farmers. The beginning of the book was fun and interesting but as you get to the middle the story got kinda boring and was just slowly treading a long with nothing really exciting happening. A little more than halfway through the story picks up again as Amy and the gang solves the ghost mysteries and finally gets an explanations for everything that was happening...which kinda turn out not to be paranormal at all.

Overall a fun novel, if you like mysteries with a little bit of magic than this is the book for you! The magic in the book are really subtle like I said before. The Goonight family sells product that has a little "something extra" since the farm is cater to different plants and herbs (with the occasional farm animals) that Aunt Hy uses in her product.  And Amy and her sisters sometimes uses the occasional simple spell (verbal enchantments) in solving the ghost mystery.