Customer Reviews

White Lies (The Arcane Society, Book 2)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Jayne Anne Krentz has taken her alter egos Amanda Quick and Jayne Castle and mixed the styles into a new Contemporary novel. The Arcane Society first presented in the Amanda Quick series has been brought to the present. The powers of the sensitives is remenisent of the powers in her St Helens Trilogy. They work very well togather and give us an interesting read.

Clare Lancaster is the illigetimate daughter of a real estate magnate. She became intimate with her biological relatives about 8 months ago. An e-mail from her sister brought her to Arizona to help Elizabeth escape an abusive husband. It seems the Glazebrooke family are members of the Arcane Society which measures the psychic power of the members. Clare and her mother are also members. Clare is a 10 on the psychic scale and can tell if you are telling a lie she is considered an exotic because of her power and abilities.
She is a human lie detector.

Jake Salter is an undercover agent for J&J (Jones & Jones)Detective agency. The Agency works to protect sensitives and root out any evil cabels that might form. He is working for Clare's dad. When Elizabeth's husband was shot and killed 6 months ago the clairvoyants at the Society found no connection to the Cabel that Jake is hunting. Jake is a 10 on the psychic scale an exotic with hunter powers.

Now Jake realizes he has been deliberately led down the wrong paths. Clare and Jake are very attracted to each other and the term running hot really means their powers mesh and open each other up to more sensitive revelations. Since Clare can tell if he is lying Jake decides to ask for her help on the investigation.

Almost immediately Clare has two close calls. She finally admits to Jake that she thinks Brad, Elizabeth's husband intended to murder her the night he was killed. Clare has thought this ever since she was the one to find him. Coming back to Arizona has just opened up the bag again. Now both Jake and Clare know there is someone who knows the truth and they have to find them first.

I enjoyed the book, it reminded me very much of an Amanda Quick book. I did like it and I would want to read it but I'm not sure I would pay $25 for it.

I have been a fan of Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick for years. I like her so much, I switched from paperbacks to hardbacks. I ordered this recently (from Amazon which has no parking problems) and it finally arrived. I stayed up all last night reading it which means I was not very productive at work today (please don't tell my manager).

Jayne Ann Krentz has frequently included a psychic element in her novels. She has written a whole series of futuristic novels where everyone on a strange planet, descendants of settlers from Earth, develops paranormal abilities. These are fun...if you like this novel, check them out.

The Arcane Society is a group of people (on Earth) with psychic or paranormal abilities. Her first Arcane Society novel was a historical romance involving the early Jones family members. This is her second and it takes place in current times.

Clare Lancaster lives in San Francisco. She was raised by her mother and her great-aunt. The outcome of a one-night stand, she never knew her father. Her mother is a member of the Arcane Society -- her psychic ability is with numbers. At the age of 13, Clare wakes up one morning and discovers that her psychic ability is detecting lies and she is way off the charts when the Arcane Society tests her. Most human lie detectors can't take the continual barrage of lies and end up as addicts, in insane asylums, or committing suicide. They have a bad stability reputation.

But with the early help of an Arcane Society therapist, Clare has learned to cope very well. She has become emotionally strong and offbeat and gutsy. She has developed an unusual philosophy about lying.

Everything was going pretty well for her. The only fly in her ointment was she could not get a desirable job at the prestigous Jones&Jones Arcane Society detective agency because the "Dumbass", Clare's name for the head of the agency, firmly believed psychics with the lie detector ability are unstable, but nevertheless she was doing enjoyable work at charitable foundations detecting [..] artists applying for funding.

Then 6 months ago, she received an email for help from her half-sister, Elizabeth. After helping Elizabeth escape from a bad marriage and stumbling over the dead body of Brad McAllister, Elizabeth's soon to be ex, Clare's life takes a downturn. She gets fired from her job and can't find another (someone is bad mouthing her); her fiance drops her like a hot potato; the police in Arizona (where Elizabeth lives with her very wealthy father -- who happens to be Clare's father too) suspect that Clare killed Brad and only the intervention of her powerful father, Archer Glazebrook, keeps her from being arrested.

Now she is back in Arizona, staying a cheap (but clean) motel, because her father has asked her to come back. He has been keeping track of her since he found out about her and knows she has not been able to find work. He has a proposal for her: he wants to make her the head of a charitable foundation he intends to set up. Clare's not too thrilled with this proposal and neither are other members of her half family.

At a party at Archer's house, Clare meets Jake Salter, a consultant working for Glazebrook. She knows he is lying about something but it's a white lie and not an ultraviolet lie, so she's not too worried about continuing the relationship -- there is instant mutual attaction between them.

Strange things related to the Arcane Society are happening in Stone Canyon, Arizona. Her first full day in Arizona, someone tries to run over Clare with an SUV in a parking lot. Her second day in Arizona, someone tries to bash in Clare's head with an 8 pound dumbbell at a spa. Clare decides to confront her suspect (Brad's mother) and instead finds another dead body (Brad's mother). The Arizona police have not forgotten that Clare found Brad's body.

Feisty Clare decides she is going to investigate Brad's unsolved murder because all her troubles started when she found his body. Jake decides he had better help her to keep her out of trouble. Naturally that also involves moving Clare from her cheap (but clean) motel into his expensive (but clean) home and his bed.

Jake is really a detective from J&J, a psychic hunter, investigating a new Arcane Society cabal. It soon becomes evident that Clare's case and his case are related.

I like the characters of both Jake and Clare. I am eagerly awaiting the next Arcane Society novel. I want to find out what happens, romantically, to the hermit-like Fallon Jones, head of J&J (aka Clare's Dumbass).

Clare Lancaster is a parasensitive, but unlike most, she off the charts sensitive, and has the special ability to tell when someone is lying to her. This makes most people very uneasy because not even fellow parasensitives are able to escape her ability. When she finally meets her father Archer Glazebrooke that has been absent for her entire life, they have a very tenuous relationship. Unlike the rest of her new family, she and Elizabeth immediately connected. Clare even helped Elizabeth get out of an abusive relationship with her husband who suddenly and conveniently was killed. Clare was accused of the murder, but they did not have enough evidence against her to prosecute.

Jake Salter is an investigator for the Archane Society. His special skills have been requested by Archer to find out if a group working outside the rules of the society are trying to get the founders formula to enhance a parasensitives ability. When Jake and Clare meet, they are attracted to one another, but Clare immediately knows Jake is hiding something. Attempts are made on Clare's life and she once again finds herself stumbling upon a dead body, so Jake takes it upon himself to be her protector.

This book was barely tolerable! There was so much background on the Archane Society, that it became monotonous and boring. Maybe some of this information should have been included in the first book, so that it didn't overwhelm the reader. I also felt no real chemistry or genuine feelings between Jake and Clare. What was there was contrived and forced.

I've been reading Krentz for a long time, but this book was a disappointment. It had a paint-by-numbers feel to it, as so many elements are lifted from her previous books, from the "hunter" parasensitivity of Jake, which is pretty much the same strat-talent as Rafe Stonebraker had in "Orchid", to who the killer was.

I'd had that nailed by page 150; nothing difficult about figuring out whodunnit...it was similar to another book, but I don't want to give anything away to those who've yet to read this one.

It wasn't much of a romance, as the characters are not well developed, and the secondary characters are also fuzzy (unlike Blade and the other denizens of Witt's End in "Hidden Talents") and there's precious little "romance" between Jake and Clare.

BTW, when I *say* "romance" I *mean* "romance", not sex. I'm not actually a fan of sex scenes, AAMOF, and would be quite happy were Krentz to delete them entirely, but in the past the romance angle was much more prominent.

So the romance facet was weak, and the mystery facet wasn't noticeably better, since the killer's identity could be tagged early in the story.

[wistfully] Personally, I wish Krentz would write a book along the lines of "Hidden Talents", "Wildest Hearts", "Grand Passion", and "Deep Waters." That period was her strongest, so far as I'm concerned.

This novel ties in from an Amanda Quick novel about the Arcane Society (Second Sight)bringing the same Society from the 19th century to the 21st. Clare Lancaster has just been introduced into the family of her father and is considered an outsider by all but her half sister, Elizabeth. Enter Jake Salter, an undercover agent for the Arcane Society. He is investigating a mysterious group trying to steal secrets that should stay with the Society. He and Clare have more in common than the mystery, both are parasensitives, she can determine liars and he is a very secretive person. The two combine talents to determine why Elizabeth's husband was murdered and by whom.
The mystery is nicely plotted and leaves an opening for more stories about Jake & Clare. The main characters are fully developed. But the secondary characters do have the usual Krentz quirkiness, and I missed. I found it distracting to be reading a section and thinking that I had read it before, which I had, in previous Jayne Castle books. Even with this, I stayed up till 3 a.m. finishing the story. As all Krentz books are those that you can't put down.

While I enjoy the Amanda Quick books and have read (so far) one of the Arcane Society novels, I enjoy Jayne Castle and Jayne Ann Krentz futuristic and contemporary mysteries even more. This book as one reviewer has already said is a blend of both and for me, a very entertaining and delightful blend!

The Prologue occurs some eight months before the start of the book. Clare Lancaster and her half sister, Elizabeth Glazebrook, are meeting for the first time in a bookstore cafe in Phoenix, Arizona. Clare and Elizabeth have been emailing each other and now Elizabeth has asked for Clare's help. Clare and Elizabeth are both "sensitives" and registered with the Arcane Society. Clare is a level-ten "lie detector" while Elizabeth is much lower level sensitive with her speciality being colors. Elizabeth is married to Brad McAllister who has sent her to a psychiatrist. Brad has told her and her family that Elizabeth is having a nervous breakdown. Elizabeth is afraid something else is going on and that Brad is having an affair and trying to kill her!!

Eight months later, Jake Salter is on the veranda at the Glazebrook home in Stone Canyon, Arizona watching Clare arrive in her small rental car. He can tell she is a sensitive and when Clare meets Jake and he introduces himself, she also can tell he is a high level sensitive - a hunter - and that while he claims to be a business consultant to Archer Glazebrook, Clare's biological father, Clare knows he is not telling the full truth. The reader also learns that 6 months previous, Brad McAllister was found dead and was found by Clare who was temporarily a suspect in his death which is unresolved. Clare is viciously verbally attacked at the party by Valerie McAllister Shipley, Brad's mother now married to Archer's former business partner, Owen Shipley. Valerie even goes out and smashes Clare's rental car's windshield.

As Clare and Jake begin to very, very cautiously work together to find the real killer of Brad McAllister, Clare has more close calls and the mystery deepens as many plot motives from relationships to money to corporations to Arcane Society business appear.

I loved how the mysteries are resolved, the items left unsolved for future books (?) and Ms. Krentz's wonderful sense of humor and romance!

A definite "can't put it down until I'm finished" read for me.

I absolutely adore Amanda Quick novels, and did actually enjoy the first Arcane Society novel, which was set in Victorian times.

White Lies would have been satisfying if I had not been expecting the sizzling dynamics and humor of an Amanda Quick novel.

To its credit, White Lies did provide more information about the nature of the Arcane Society secret formula. The characters, however, were beyond dull, at least compared with Amanda Quick heroines and heroes, who tend to be enterprising, upbeat, inventive, yet wary and skeptical. As opposed to Amanda Quick novels, which are filled with a "sense of place," the details of Scottsdale fell flat. It was as though the author had visited a spa for a week (hence all the details about the different types of steam baths and massages), but failed to really understand the nature of the desert. It was a shame, because there is a kind of magic in the desert that would have meshed well with the Arcane Society.

What I think felt worst about reading this novel was that it was as though the writer herself no longer believed in the danger of love, vulnerability, and altered states, and nor did she believe in her fundamental premise - that a man and a woman can be kindred spirits, soul mates, and partners on physical and spiritual planes.

Perhaps the third novel in the Arcane Society series will have that. I am planning to pre-order it, but, in all honesty, I'm going to be managing my expectations downward.

Just finished 'White Lies' - what can I say? Loved it. Thank you, Jayne, for combining some of the best of your historical, paranormal romance with the modern stuff. If you've read the Arcane Society books, you gotta get this one. Don't want to spoil anything, but it's a LOT of fun. :-)

The Story
Six months ago Clare, off the charts human lie detector, found her brother in law killed. Now after several attempts to harm Clare, her brother in laws mother is found dead in her pool by Clare. Suspicions rise, and Clare is stuck in AZ with investigator Jake and her new found family. There is someone out to pin this on Clare and hurt her father. Jake and Clare must find out who before anything else happens.

Thoughts
This book was hard to get through. Clare is a contradiction and really hard to like. She is untrusting, skeptical and stubborn as hell. The second Jake starts talking to her she spills her guts. That didn't ring true for me after the way she is portrayed. Plus the way she treats everyone else makes her really hard to sympathize with. Jake is all alpha and has a dark side, I'm all for that, but his "you will do this, you will do that" instead of asking was too much. I liked the other character, Clare's sister and Dad try so hard to help her and be a part of her life, but she shuts them out. Plus there is a bunch of Arcane history that was hard to get through. The "relationship" between Clare and Jake was too forced, I didn't get any love from them. This isn't a keeper... There is just over the top everything....

This was my first time reading this author, and I won't read another one. There was too much description, the conversations seemed contrived, and I really had no attachment to the main characters. I honestly didn't really care what happened to them.