Yellow Jessamine Review: Caitlin Starling Casts a Spell, Then Loses the Thread

A gorgeously atmospheric novella full of plague, rot, and black lace that stumbles in its final act

Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling starts incredibly strong, with rich atmospheric detail and a deeply creepy vibe, but ultimately sputters out and ends with a whimper.

Evelyn Perdanu is a shipping magnate and the only living survivor of her family. She moves through the city veiled and hidden from the eyes of those around her. Her country is slowly dying, rotting away like food left out to spoil. When she returns from her latest voyage, she discovers that a plague has descended on the city, and that it has been traced back to her crew. They behave erratically before slipping into catatonia. She begins investigating the plague as much for the sake of the city and its people as for her own company and family name. What she finds is complicated, horrific, and, at times, highly confusing.

This story begins beautifully. It is atmospheric and enchanting. We learn bits and pieces of Evelyn’s background, her relationship with her assistant, and the fact that she is a master herbalist who has used her concoctions all over town, both for good and ill. That backstory gave me a solid foundation for Evelyn and made her easy to picture in my mind.

All of that takes place in the first act.

Once the second act begins, though, additional ideas and characters are folded into the story, including the police captain, and things begin to blur. I found myself unsure of what mattered most. Was I meant to be most concerned with the police captain sniffing around? With the plague itself? With Evelyn’s business interests? The story introduces several threads, but not all of them feel equally grounded.

By the third act, the book becomes stranger still, and for me, more confusing. Then it simply ends. I do not want to spoil it, because the ending comes so far out of left field that it is best left unspoken.

Conceptually, this is a remarkable book. Starling absolutely knows how to work words into magic inside the reader’s mind. During the first half, my imagination was filled with yellow smoke, twisted thorny vines, and a woman veiled in black lace sitting at the center of it all. That imagery is powerful. But the novel lost me in the second act, and by the third, I was confused enough by some of its choices that I was mostly just ready to be done. Even so, the atmospheric description and vivid detail remained strong throughout, and that is what carried me to the end.