A very YA look into the world of prohibition era New York, with a dash of gangsters and a frothy romance thrown in.
Canary Club follows 'Bad Luck' Benny - fresh out of jail, and Maisie, daughter of the local 'mob' boss who Benny ends up working for. Maisie is head strong, like her father, yet vows not to follow in his footsteps. Benny is determined to keep on the right side of the law, yet is drawn into a murky underworld in order to provide for his ailing family. With Maisie facing trouble as the pawn in her families fight for control of the city, she turns to the one person she thinks will be able to help her. But can love win over business?
I enjoyed the author's descriptions of prohibition New York. It's an area of history I know little about, and I adsorbed every little morsel of description that was written about it.The slang used is also rather delightful, and for the most part the story itself is well written.
However, this is where it sort of all starts to fall apart for me as I really didn't like either of the main characters. Maisie is rather one dimensional, naive and doesn't really have much going for her. At times I found her boring and shallow. She also comes across as too modern for her era. One of my gripes in historical fiction is making a female character appear to be so brazen in her 'repressed woman' status for her time period, which Maisie frequently laments. It seems really out of character for a woman of her era to express herself in such a way, and it irritates me.
Benny, as Maisie's love interest, doesn't seem very realistic - he's a mash up of every 'down on his luck' 'jack of the lad' character that's been done before, and far better. Again, he's very one dimensional with no emotional depth and little development throughout the novel.
The plot itself is very centred around the romance elements, and unfortunately it's a case of instalove at its finest. There's no build up to Benny and Maisie falling in love etc. or even any courtship - it's just instantaneous infatuation and it all feels a little bit too 'sweet'. You'd expect a bit of grit for a gangster book. Speaking of 'grit; the 'big bad' is also extremely one dimensional, with little input from the author with regards to making him appear more human and less a simple plot device to provide a problem to the main characters.
I think that's one of the biggest issues with the book - there's just no depth to any of the characters.
The rest of the plot is also rather flat and predictable. I guessed what was going to happen constantly, and I was never surprised by anything in the plot. Because of this, I did unfortunately find myself getting bored. The whole story line just felt a little underwhelming and rushed - especially the ending. I would have preferred it if more time was spent developing and delving deeper into the characters emotions. Because it was so lacking, I just couldn't get emotionally invested in anything that was happening.
Unfortunately underwhelming for me, but I think this will definitely appeal to those looking for a heavy dose of romance mixed with a sprinkling of history.
2 stars
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