The Mysteries by Lisa Tuttle

8/10

The Mysteries by Lisa Tuttle is a novel that weaves together modern mystery and the fairy-tales of the United Kingdom in a unique way. In the midst of telling the tale of Private Investigator Ian Kennedy’s search for the missing Peri, Tuttle weaves in the stories of other mysterious disappearances. These breaks from the main plot serve to inform the reader about the nature of Peri’s disappearance, as well as explain Kennedy’s past - and his obsession with finding the missing.

Tuttle weaves in Scottish lore into these vignettes, especially in the case of Fred’s story as well as Amy’s, providing the reader with enough explanation to make sense of the story as well as add to the mystery of Peri’s disappearance. However, the alternating chapters were more than a bit unsettling for me at first, but once I started to expect them I began to see how they added to the story as opposed to subtracted from it.

While there are elements of romance, I found it incredibly refreshing to find that the main character was not involved in a real relationship. It was a nice change from other novels in the same sort of genre. Laura and Ian’s relationship is so much harder to categorise that, if like me, the reader has been reading non-stop romance, it will refresh and leave the reader satisfied as well as curious as to what will happen in the future.

Personally, I was very much entertained by the realistic method of writing, particularly when Ian lamented on the struggle of meeting a fellow American outside of the country. To me, it showed that these weren’t perfect characters but that they were human and experienced the familiar dread of explaining that no, you haven’t ever been to ‘X’ in Wisconsin.

However, the secondary “main-character” Peri does not make an appearance until the last few chapters, which really bothered me. Peri became more of an ideal as opposed to a character, and it disappointed me, as it presented Peri as a frivolous teenager.

I feel as though this was more of an easy read, as opposed to a novel with so many different terms and people that you basically have to take notes to understand the story. While this wasn’t my favorite novel I’ve read, it certainly is one of the more unique fairy-centric novels I’ve read.