If you’ve ever wondered what a classic style noir mystery story would be like with a bit of pixie dust thrown on it, look no further than City of Villains by Estelle Laure. Full of atmosphere and angst, City of Villains is an intriguing YA read, but one that falters from its short length cutting down its potential.
Mary Elizabeth Hart spends her days as a Legacy high school student and her night interning at Monarch Police Department. Ever since her parents were killed in a hate crime, Mary has longed to become a part of the city’s crime solving team. When a fellow Legacy high school student goes missing, Mary finally gets a chance to work on a case. As the investigation progresses, Mary finds out there is more to the disappearances than she realised and those closest to her have their role to play in the mystery.
City of Villains is an intriguing story, but one that suffers from not having time to find the balance of what it wants to be. On one side, it wants to be a light YA (or tween) novel with quippy dialogue, angsty romance, and themes of empowerment. On the other side, it wants to be a dark, gritty noir reimagining of Disney villains with explorations of prejudice and gentrification. These two sides never quite mesh together and the story ends up feeling a little choppy and uneven, though ultimately it stays interesting throughout and the end will leave you ready for more.
One thing that excelled in this novel was the atmosphere. Though Laure was not heavy handed or intricate in descriptions, the scenes and vibe of the Scar were easy to conjure and lent quite a bit of support throughout the novel. Interestingly, I believe the cover of the novel really helped jump start my brain off on the right path for settling into the atmosphere and Laure’s storytelling finished out the rest.
Reimagining Disney villains in a high school setting may not be a new concept, but I feel that Laure made this story her own. However, the story and characters would have benefitted from probably about 75 more pages. The book clocks in at 229 pages, which is quite short for a YA novel. And you can feel the lack of space the story was given. The world building was very vague and there were many mentions of things happening outside the main mystery of the missing teens that never got fully woven into the story and therefore left them feeling random and unnecessary.
As for the characters, Mary Elizabeth Hart gets the best fleshing out since she is the main character, but almost every other character in the story feels underserved. Mary definitely fits into the idea of an intrepid teen with high aspirations and not enough wisdom. She doesn’t always make the most logical of choices, but she is a teen and that’s what teens (and honestly, a lot of adults) do. Mary’s working relationship/friendship with Bella never quite clicked and I constantly felt myself wishing for more background from Bella.
Another aspect of the story that mostly worked, but would have benefitted from more time to grow is the establishment of the Disney characters within the confines of this novel. It never felt like we had a full explanation of how the Disney characters were integrated into the novel’s world. There were some brief cameos of well known Disney names and the purposefully obvious character reimaginings (James is Captain Hook, Mally is Maleficent, and Ursula is well…Ursula), but readers may spend more time focusing on trying to figure out how certain characters match up to their Disney counterparts. And while that was distracting, it was interesting to see how Mary was set up in her role. Readers, myself included, will be very interested to see how that plays out.
At the end of the day, City of Villains never quite hit the mark, but it came darn close. I desperately hope that Laure is given more page time to flesh out her story in book 2, because with more room to grow the characters and logically connect the plot, we would have a great book to read. I recommend going into this one knowing that it’s a little cheesy and disjointed, but has some good bones and one hell of a hook with the ending.
City of Villains is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Disney’s Villains meet Gotham in this gritty fairy tale-inspired crime series.
Mary Elizabeth Heart is a high school senior by day, but by night she’s an intern at the Monarch City police department. She watches with envy from behind a desk as detectives come and go, trying to contain the city’s growing crime rate. For years, tension has simmered between the city’s wealthy elite, and their plans to gentrify the decaying neighborhood called the Scar—once upon a time the epicenter of all things magic.
When the daughter of one of the city’s most powerful businessmen goes missing, Mary Elizabeth is thrilled when the Chief actually puts her on the case. But what begins as one missing person’s report soon multiplies, leading her down the rabbit hole of a city in turmoil. There she finds a girl with horns, a boyfriend with secrets, and what seems to be a sea monster lurking in a poison lake. As the mystery circles closer to home, Mary finds herself caught in the fight between those who once had magic, and those who will do anything to bring it back.
This dark and edgy YA series explores the reimagined origins of Maleficent, Ursula, Captain Hook, and other infamous Disney Villains like you’ve never seen before.
