Stranger than fiction?

This one goes on several tangents and I’m not sure I enjoyed the ride along. At some point I had to be reminded that it was a memoir I was reading and not fiction. I cringed every time she mentioned Rob Brezney’s astrology column. Seriously? I used to read his stuff in the local free rag during a particularly depressing summer in San Diego. I only saw clever phrases built around some goofy advice. Entertainment, in other words. Get Real! ( )

I think this book is mis-titled, as very little of this book was actually about a skeptic's search for an honest mystic. Most for this book was about the author's meanderings, celebrity sightings, and navel-gazing. She's a competent writer, and has some good insights, but it just wasn't the kind of spiritual memoir I was expecting or looking for. ( )

I'm taking off two stars for something that might not be the author's fault: the title didn't reflect the book. It could be the publisher thought this one was catchy (or SEO enabled) or perhaps this was the work-in-progress title but the final book went in another direction.

The author frequently refers to herself as a memoirist, which seems accurate. She has a long, discursive style of storytelling where a long, long personal anecdote precedes the stated topic of a chapter. I don't object to that per se; it's a style I'm prone to and Ms. Loustalot does it rather well. Her prose is very readable. But still, the story payoff isn't always there.

Perhaps a better subtitle would have been "In which I examine my life through the lens of interviews with and occasional visits to psychics." ( )

Pearl Ruled. I wanted concrete examples of readings that worked or didn't work, not a chapter on the history of Voodoo. Way too much on the author's personal life. ( )