Angel Café
Jill Morrow
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Paraview Pocket Books
ISBN: 0743475739

Some Spirits Are Best Left Alone.

For Secretaries' Day, lawyer Kat Valenti takes hers to lunch at south Baltimore's Angel Café, a trendy new eatery where patrons enjoy exotic fare along with psychic readings. It was Devon's choice, & Kat is biliously eyeing both the prices & the decor. The place is loaded with kitschy chubby angels, & the menu would only satisfy a rich rabbit, except for the heavenly chocolate cake.

& when the owner/reader mistakes the statuesque Devon for the boss & gives her a reading, Kat can't control her reactions ... or her mouth. Things can only go downhill, until Stephen gets up from their table to leave in a huff. When he stumbles, Kat reaches out to steady him, & he speaks to her a strange voice uttering one sentence that changes Kat's life.

Kat carries a broken heart -- her beloved Peter, a reporter for the Sun newspaper, died two years before, apparently from a drunken suicide. She's always known something was wrong with that -- he neither drank very much nor owned a gun, & was certainly not depressed. Overcome with grief she shut down, continued to live with her father & aunt, dove into getting her degrees & immersed herself in her career.

Now this charlatan has spoken Peter's name & she's enraged & confused.

Because his customers expect their readings along with their food, Stephen decides he'd better find a real psychic. While interviewing Tia Melody, she suddenly takes over, saunters out into the lunch crowd, & performs like the pro she is.

Meanwhile, back at Kat's office, Devon has undergone a major transformation. Where once she was a flexible & efficient secretary, a dazzlingly beautiful & madly-in-love wife, she is now sullen, sloppy & rude. With her beloved Chris she is a gaunt-eyed harpie, nagging him to join Tia Melody's inner circle, where the psychic channels the mesmerizing & omnipotent Valentine.

Stephen is thrilled with Tia Melody's success, after all she is drawing a huge, devoted crowd & his restaurant is pulling in money as never before. He cannot, however, shake off an uneasiness, especially after Tia warns him that his current girlfriend is two-timing him. When he finds out that she really is, his admiration of this psychic's skill is further fraught with discomfort. After all, Tia Melody is far from the ideal image of a psychic -- she's a chain-smoking, loud-mouthed, aggressive dame who channels this strange & menacing entity, & has hooked most of his customers. Who she is, what is her past, slowly emerges.

& then Kat has a dream in which Stephen's name is spoken, & Stephen is given a bit of a reading in which Kit's name comes up, & when Kat returns to his café, they decide they need to talk. At first they can't stand each other. As they share their information, the goings on at the Angel Café escalate. There is talk of customers making killings in finances, & there are some deaths.

When Chris comes to Kat, terrified & furious at the changes in his wife, the threesome, together with Kat's aunt, must face the lethal undercurrents of a New Age financial confidence cult.

A good evening's read, about the eternal battle between evil & goodness, about resistance & skepticism, about enchantment & responsibility. Angel Café is flawlessly written with a fast paced plot, as perfectly twisted & tasty as those yummies on bakery shelves.

I eagerly await Jill Morrow's sequel to Angel Café!
(05/02/04)

Rebecca