Rating: 4.5🌈
Ghostly Hostage is an excellent example of a series can continue to grow and expand its universe and make narrative choices that are both exciting and challenging.
In Ghostly Hostage, our main couple has just finished their much needed vacation abroad a cruise. They’ve also decided to move into Lance’s house together. All big plans and steps forward in their relationship.
But immediately they and this story is plunged into a hostage situation.
Usually it’s Homicide Detective Angus whose life is placed in jeopardy. But here, instead, it’s the morgue with all its employees we’ve gotten to know and become fond of who are in eminent danger.
Laya makes the situation even more complicated by placing at its center a case and the people holding them at gunpoint, people we will understand and empathize with. It’s a horrible situation but at its heart is something far worse. A dead child who may have been murdered.
The author switches the perspective back and forth between the increasingly tense hostage situation and those outside the morgue hoping for answers, amplifying the suspense and the anxiety scene by scene. Even as the emotional component is realistically raised by those inside and out, with people crumbling under the stress, Laya remembers this is a police procedural that includes stalling by the hospital, warrants, and long hours of believable research. Even when there’s ghosts involved.
And there’s plenty of ghosts involved here. Including new ones. They flow seamlessly into the investigation in increasingly familiar but complex ways. And it adds to the paranormal aspect of this series by involving new characters in this world.
The crime, criminal, and ending was one I really appreciated. Although it’s a ghostly tale, the author treats it in a factual, grounded in reality manner that elevates the story.
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
I’m highly recommending this book and the entire series.
Ghostly series:
✓ Ghostly Awakening #1
✓ Ghostly Findings #2
✓ Ghostly Envy #3
✓ Ghostly Claus #4
✓ Ghostly Target #5
✓ Ghostly Hostage #6
â—¦ Ghostly Death #7-tbd
Buy Link:
Blurb:
Back from vacation, Lance is ready to dive back into work—that is, until the morgue employees are taken hostage on his first day back. Held at gunpoint was not how he thought he’d spend his day. With their lives on the line, Lance and the others have no choice but to follow orders and perform the autopsy that’s been demanded.
Angus never dreamed he’d be the one worrying about Lance being killed. He was the one with the dangerous job, not Lance. With the only information he can get coming from the ghosts, Angus and his mother try to sort through the evidence and do everything they can to keep Lance and the others alive.
As the case unfolds, Angus faces twists and turns he never saw coming, and as the truth is exposed, he prays the vacation he just enjoyed with Lance won’t be the last one they ever share.
• Publisher: E.L. Publishing (February 20, 2024)
• Publication date: February 20, 2024
• Language: English
• File size: 425 KB
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 