Fanning Fireflies by LS Delorme

There is something rotting in Harrisville.

It’s 1944 and Veronica works so she can afford to eat. Maybe one day she will save enough to own the home her family is living in, but for now, she doesn’t have time for fanciful thoughts, or much else. She doesn’t have time for the fire whispering to her, the ghosts trying to talk to her and the son of her boss, who can’t stop staring at her.

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She definitely doesn’t have time to think about Lazlo, the handsome black soldier that she processed at the draft office, but she can’t seem to stop herself. As her ability to ignore Lazlo evaporates, so does her self-imposed ignorance about her hometown. There is, and always has been, something rotten in Harrisville. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, Veronica works in the cigarette factory, where corpses hide in the tobacco with the roaches.

My Review

Fanning Fireflies is like a fantasy version of Mississippi Burning (sorry if that dates me), only set in 1944 rather than the 1960s. Racism is rife in the Southern states and in Harrisville it’s about as bad as it can get. Rallies are held by a group of Harrisville residents, which eventually morph into the Ku Klux Klan. And they soon become violent.

Veronica lives with her mother Iona and her brother Franklin, who has a stutter. This makes him a target for the town bullies, particularly the loathsome Tommy Sawika. Tommy’s father John owns the cigarette factory where both Veronica and Iona work. Franklin works at the pig farm.

Then comes the draft for young men to join the war effort and many of these boys are black. In the book they are referred to as ‘colored’ but that is not meant in any way to be disrespectful – it’s how they were referred to at the time. Veronica, plus her friends Lizzie and Missy, can earn more money by helping to register these would-be soldiers. The girls alternate each day between the white men and the ‘coloreds’. And it’s here that Veronica first encounters Lazlo Fox. If the townspeople saw him so much as looking at her, he would be beaten, and she would be considered an outcast.

In the meantime, Franklin is in love with Nan Payne, daughter of the widowed Dr Payne, but he is too scared to court her. He would be ridiculed by Tommy and his bunch of bullies, or worse.

One day Veronica sees the most beautiful couple. She eventually discovers that they are called Dante and Kara. But are they real or are they ghosts? Veronica has started to see the ghosts of dead animals who appear to be trying to tell her things. And it’s not only animals who have died in suspicious circumstances.

Fanning Fireflies took me way out of my comfort zone. I read a lot of gothic horror, supernatural stories and magical realism, but as this book progresses we are literally ‘shoved kicking and screaming’ into the world of fantasy, with an ending that borders on apocalyptic. It literally blew my mind and I was almost scared to read on. But of course I did!

Many thanks to @LiterallyPR for inviting me me to be part of the #FanningFireflies blog tour.

About the Author

Lexy Delorme was born in San Diego, California. After graduating from the University of North Carolina School of law, various internships and years working in risk, tax, family, and international law, she now classifies herself as a recovering attorney. With a father who served in the US Military, Lexy had a wandering lifestyle from her earliest days and in her time has been a pop musician, a science geek and a writer for magazines like Bonjour Paris and Playtimes. Throughout all of her different careers, her love of fiction has been a mainstay.

Within this eclectic life, she was also one of the first employees at 23andMe, a genomics and biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California and that experience influenced the genetic aspects of her Limerent Series, of which Caio is the first book.

For as long as she can remember she’s had characters in her head. As a child, these were the friends she wished to have. As a young woman, the lovers she wanted to find or the people she wanted to become. Writing fiction novels allows her the chance to give these characters a background, a story and a voice.

Having lived in in three continents, none US states, and 21 cities around the world, including London and Hong Kong, Lexy now lives in Paris with her French husband and two very cool sons. She is currently working on the next books in the Limerent Series.

Buy Links
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www.goodreads.com

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