The Weekly Pour: The Mystic and the Missing Girl by Vikki VanSickle
New Release Tuesday just gave us a tarot deck, a cold case, and a heroine who would very much like to be left alone, thank you. Vikki VanSickle's adult fiction debut, The Mystic and the Missing Girl, hits shelves today, September 8, and it might be the coziest way we've ever recommended you spiral about an unsolved disappearance.
About the Book
Drew Benson has a secret, and honestly, she'd like to keep it that way. She gets visions — a gift she's ignored since she was a teenager, back when her late aunt Hannah (a.k.a. local TV psychic "Hannah Mystic") got blamed for failing to find a missing teenager in their small lakeside hometown of Stanfield. Twenty years later, Drew is just trying to keep her aunt's metaphysical shop, Good Vibrations, afloat, wrangle her astrology-obsessed employee George, and avoid eye contact with local heartbreaker Foster Banks. A quiet life. A normal life. The universe, as always, disagrees.
Enter Nick Campbell — Drew's high school lab partner turned big-city reporter turned extremely inconvenient reminder that some rivalries never really end — who wants to reopen the cold case that ruined her aunt's name. Which means Drew has to actually use her gift again, on purpose, in public, with bills piling up and her mother sighing disapprovingly in the background. Tarot cards, old grudges, a vandal who wants her out of town, and one seriously twisty ending later, and we were completely, unashamedly obsessed.
Genre: Cozy Mystery / Magical Realism
Perfect for fans of: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman and Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen.
This Week’s Pour: Veer Reverie Dry Riesling
A book about a reluctant psychic basically pairs itself, so we're pouring the Veer Reverie Dry Riesling ($10/glass) — crisp, a little dreamy, named for the exact thing Drew's been trying not to have for twenty years. We regret nothing about this pun and we will not be taking questions.
Keeping it alcohol-free? Order Athletic’s Upside Dawn IPA — because someone finally cracked a cold case before it was too late, and honestly, that's the whole plot in a glass.
However you take it: light a candle, shuffle something, and let Drew figure out what actually happened to Ginny Evans. (We have theories. We are wrong about all of them.)
Come Sip & Read With Us
The Mystic and the Missing Girl just landed on our new release table, and it is giving very cozy-fall-Tuesday energy. Grab your copy, order your Reverie, and come tell us whether you saw that ending coming — we absolutely did not. Tag @thebookloungeid, we want to hear your theories.
Happy Reading (and Sipping!),
The Book Lounge Crew
