Review: Second Sight

Second Sight
by Debbie Mumford

A mysterious grimoire of Celtic origins has been linked to two murders. To break the case, psychic investigator Zach Douglass seeks the assistance of a gifted translator, beautiful Jenny Murdoch. But Jenny has a dark secret. She’s spent years repressing a potent psychic talent: her ‘tiger’, which she believes killed her parents. Jenny will crack the grimoire and learn to trust her tiger, but she’ll fall under suspicion for the murders. And one of the victim’s was Zach’s fiancée.

This book was a combination of a very interesting world of psychics and a bit of magic. Fast-paced and well-written, I found myself placed dead center in a murder investigation within the first few pages. While sometimes this can cause some distress to a reader, I believe that the author handled it very well. The information wasn’t overpowering--if anything it was fascinating how Debbie Mumford dealt with the skepticism on the part of the police and the quiet frustration on the part of the psychics when they tried to deal with each other.

How is a man supposed to trust his instincts and his heart when he’s not sure what either are trying to tell him anymore? That is the question Zach has to deal with. We meet Zach first in the story, and I originally thought his Happily Ever After was going to be with his fiancée, not really remembering all I had read in the above blurb. Thankfully, we weren’t given so much information on their relationship that when she indeed becomes one of the victims fairly early in the book, I wasn’t devastated at the loss of our heroine. She was a very integral part in the man Zach is and becomes, but I didn’t grow so attached to her that it ruined the rest of the story for me. The guilt Zach feels as he finds himself falling for another woman so soon after he loses his best friend and fiancée is really quite heart-wrenching, and I found myself really rooting for him to come to terms with his feelings so that he and Jenny could be happy.

How is a woman supposed to trust her intuition when it has betrayed her before? Jenny has found that trusting her intuition, and allowing her gift any sort of freedom has led to betrayal on the part of those she loves and trusted, and even betrayal by her gift. It doesn’t matter that her perceptions are warped by her childish memories and not what she knows as an adult. Faced with a man who is willing to believe in her, and in fact does believe in her when she continues to doubt herself, throws Jenny into a tailspin she’s not sure how to pull out of. Her journey as she comes to terms with her own personal power and what really happened in her past kept me immersed in this story all the way to the nail-biting ending.

Although I found parts of it to be a bit predictable, I have to say that I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for suspense, romance, intrigue with a bit of the paranormal tossed in. I fell in love with the characters and especially with Jenny’s “tiger”. All in all, a great and satisfying read I enjoyed.



Reviewed by Viscaria