Editorial Content for Holding Court

HOLDING COURT by K.C. Held is the perfect blend of funny lines, dramatic scenes and an anticipatory tone. It is about a young girl named Jules with a special “gift." I could say Jules is not your typical teenager, but it's funny because that is both completely true and utterly false.

Let’s start with how it is completely true. At the start of the book, Jules gets a job to make some extra money --- sounds good. Of course, she also has a high school crush and a best friend. So what makes her so different? Probably her weird “condition." You see, every once in a while, Jules bursts out saying strange and unusual conflagrations of words. She also happens to shout out prophecies, which of course sound weird at the time, but later help. Of course, this makes her the weirdo and outcast of the school.

This book delivered what it promised and a little more --- it's a fun, sweet YA contemporary story with a great mystery, a good romance and a main character who readers will want to be friends with.

But not everyone thinks she’s crazy. You see, her weird “condition” is actually passed down by the women in her family. For example, her grandmother can see people’s auras and find their perfect match. The difference is that they all know what to do with their gifts and how to use them to help people. But Jules is stuck at that awkward “What do I do?” phase so common to teenagers everywhere.

So Jules gets a job as a fortune teller at the castle-turned-dinner theater Tudor Times. The positive? She gets to be near her high school crush, Grayson Chandler. The negative? Her costume is ugly and her job is nothing like what she expected. Then there’s the fact that she no sooner starts than she finds a dead body --- a murdered one, to be exact.

But the twist is that it disappears a few minutes after finding it. Then Jules --- and the reader --- must ask "Did it really happen, or did Jules hallucinate it as a part of her powers?" Thus, an adventure is born. Jules and Grayson work together to find both the body and its murderer.

One thing I loved about this story is how much it made me laugh. I often found myself hiding my face, trying not to look like a book was making me laugh so hard. Jules was just hilarious, as was her best friend. Her sense of humor made it so much easier to connect with her.  K.C. Held does a great job with managing the romantic twist while keeping the reader’s attention and getting you totally hooked. This book delivered what it promised and a little more --- it's a fun, sweet YA contemporary story with a great mystery, a good romance and a main character who readers will want to be friends with. Definitely a five out of five.