Jinx High

Diana Tregarde Investigation Series, Book 3

By: Mercedes Lackey

Narrated by: Traci Odom

Fay Harper looks like any other teenage girl - any other Queen Bee, that is. She's blond, and beautiful, and very, very popular - the kind of popular that attracts boys like honey. Fay and her gang take a lot of risks, but so far, they've managed to get away with everything. It's as if they are magically protected.

Summoned to Tulsa by an old friend whose son has fallen in with Fay's crowd, Diana Tregarde, practicing witch and successful romance novelist, quickly finds herself in hot water. The new girl at school, Monica Carlin, has come under sorcerous attack, but Diana cannot identify, or stop, the power-wielder. To make matters worse, there is an ancient being sleeping under Tulsa, a being who might be woken by the magic battles taking place in the city. What will happen then, even Diana cannot predict.

©1991 Mercedes Lackey (P)2019 Tantor

Quite good

The best of the series, this story has engaging characters and a suspenseful plot.

While the adult characters are a bit dated (aging hippies) with typical 60s attitudes, the young characters are quite well observed. The high school environment is believable, and the tribulations of high schoolers are plausible.

Unexpected Ending

This last book in the Diane Trigarde trilogy reminded me quite a bit of her Elemental Masters series, to the point where I'm somewhat surprised Lackey didn't just make this a modern day set of stories in that world. But then, the previous two books probably wouldn't have worked.

This book and this audiobook performance were the best of the three in my opinion. The reader finally seems to have gotten into her style for these books, and didn't sound as mechanical as she did at points in Burning Water.

Regarding the plot, I enjoyed the story, and appreciated the fact that it did not go at all like the books it initially reminded me of. There was a lot of information the main character never learned. There were people who weren't saved. And the last few pages were not at all what I was expecting. An interesting end to the trilogy. Definitely worth reading. I'll be reading them all again later.

Reading this book is no Jinx!!!

Lackey has a way of making the magical life be ‘Magical’ to readers as well as listeners!! I hear the complex story lines she masterfully weaves up in the package listeners purchased.

Disappointing finale to the series

Wow this book was a huge disappointment compared to the first two books. At some point I felt like the author just gave up on trying to put this into the same universe as her other two Tregarde books. Even Diana didn’t seem the same to me.

The villain didn’t seem to be at the rate of other villains Diana has dealt with but for some reason the author made Diana seem almost incompetent. Diana just seemed to really underestimate what this villain could go, and the villain seemed to think of everything in advance. I found this odd as the villain did not come off as that forward thinking – she seemed to be so arrogant I was surprised at how much effort she put into protecting herself.

None of the high school characters are even remotely likable. I think the author was trying to show that as teenagers are emotions and thoughts are all over the place, but it came off as every teenager being a petty, selfish and uncompassionate individual.

The narrator was just okay – I felt she got very high pitched and whiny for the teenage girls to the point they all sounded like they were way younger and screeching a lot.