Category: Publishers

Greek Mythology Comes to Life with MINOTAUR by J.A. Rock (guest post and giveaway)

Minotaur_600x900

MINOTAUR by J.A. Rock

Published by Riptide Publishing
Cover Art by  Imaliea

Buy it at Riptide Publishing

Hi! I’m J.A. Rock, and I’m touring the internet with my new release, MINOTAUR, a queer fantasy/horror reimagining of the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. And there’s a giveaway involved! I’m giving one reader a chance to win Lost in a Jigsaw, the puzzle that nearly destroyed my sanity a few years ago (but provided hours of fun, I swear), as well as a $15 Riptide voucher.


Thanks so much to Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words for having me here today, and to everyone following the tour.  Here’s today’s look at MINOTAUR.

The Legend of the Minotaur

There are many versions of the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. The basic story is that King Minos of Crete’s wife, Queen Pasiphae, was cursed by Poseidon to fall in love with a bull. She slept with the bull and gave birth to a monster that was half-man, half-bull, which King Minos then had shut up in a labyrinth so complicated, no one could get out of it alive.

Every year, seven Athenian men and seven Athenian women were sent to the labyrinth as tributes to keep the Minotaur satisfied. Theseus eventually decided to go into the labyrinth as one of the tributes and kill the Minotaur. To ensure he could find his way out, Princess Ariadne, Minos’s daughter, gave Theseus a ball of thread, so that he could tie one end to the labyrinth’s door and follow the thread back to the entrance.

I didn’t actually know the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur terribly well when I started Minotaur. My mom had a book of Greek myths she read to me from when I was a kid, and I liked the story of the labyrinth because I was obsessed with mazes. Loving mazes is a thing. I reacquainted myself with the legend by reading it over a couple of times before I started writing, but I wasn’t looking to do a blow-by-blow retelling of the myth. Nor was I looking to do anything specific and agenda-driven, like “a feminist retelling of the Minotaur story.”

What I did want to do was explore themes of heroism, sacrifice, self-discovery, and what makes a monster. Minotaur takes place in an unspecified time based very loosely on the 1930s, and centers on an angry orphan, Thera, whose fascination with a legendary beast comes in part from the wickedness she perceives in herself. Years before Thera was born, a young woman gave birth to a baby she couldn’t care for, and the baby grew into the Minotaur, a half-woman, half-bull who terrorized the town of Rock Hill before she was trapped in a labyrinth. Now the town feeds her tributes in the form of orphans and criminals in order to keep her satisfied in her prison.

There are characters in Minotaur who have counterparts in the legend—though Thera is almost an anti-Theseus, drawn to the labyrinth for selfish reasons, and frustrated by society’s willingness to deem grand acts “heroic” while failing to recognize more subtle, honest displays of loyalty and courage as anything other than recklessness and stupidity.

What I love about the original myth is the way you just kind of have to roll with it. Pasiphae was cursed to fall in love with a bull? Okay, why not. The king had Daedalus build a massive labyrinth to contain the Minotaur? Sure. Myths are stories where so much seems to be going on below the surface, and yet they’ve been reduced to easily digestible two or three paragraph tales.

I didn’t care so much about being true to the legend as I did about showing what might lie under the surface in a story like Theseus’s, or Thera’s. Minotaur is not a tale about a monster and a hero, but rather about the way the two coexist in all of us.

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Giveaway

Thanks for being part of the tour! To celebrate this release, I’m giving one commenter Lost in a Jigsaw, the award winning maze puzzle—all the pieces fit together, so the only way to know if you’ve put it together correctly is to solve the maze. If this sounds too much like torture, rest assured that you also get a $15 Riptide voucher. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post with a way to contact you.  Please leave your email address so we can get in touch with you if chosen. On October 26th, I’ll draw a winner from all eligible comments. Contest is not limited to US entries. If you’d like,follow the whole tour—the more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win!

Blurb

Minotaur_600x900GreekKnow this: I am not a warrior. I am a disease.

When I was six, my parents died.

When I was sixteen, I was locked away in Rock Point Girls’ Home. Nobody wants to deal with a liar. An addict. A thief.

Nobody except Alle. She is pure, and she’s my friend in spite of all the rotten things I am. 

There was once another girl like me—long ago. A cast-off daughter. A lying little beast who left a red stain across the land with her terrible magic. She’s imprisoned now in a maze high up on the cliffs. They say she’s half woman, half bull. They say she dines on human tributes and guards a vast treasure. They say she was born wicked.

But I know her better than the history books or stories do. She and I dream together. Our destinies are twisted up like vines.

Except I’m not going to turn out wicked like she is. I can save myself by destroying her. I’m going to break out of this place, and I’m going to enter the labyrinth and take her heart.

And once I’m redeemed, maybe Alle will love me.

http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/minotaur

About The Author

J.A. Rock is the author of queer romance and suspense novels, including By His Rules, Take the Long Way Home, and, with Lisa Henry, The Good Boy and When All the World Sleeps. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and a BA in theater from Case Western Reserve University. J.A. also writes queer fiction and essays under the name Jill Smith. Raised in Ohio and West Virginia, she now lives in Chicago with her dog, Professor Anne Studebaker.

A MelanieM Scary Review Redux: Necromancy and You (Guidebook #02) by Missouri Dalton

A Scary Review Redux!

Rating: 5 stars out of 5   ☠☠☠☠☠

Necromancy and You cover full sizeAlter (Al) Skelton is just like  any other 15 year old who is obsessed with death.  He has a purple and black bedroom full of skulls, walls decorated with Day of the Dead posters and a vent where he hides all his copies of Raising the Dead from Cemetery Comics.  Shortly after his 15th birthday, Al sends away for a copy of  Necromancy and You with a coupon out of the back of his Raising the Dead comic along with the box tops from three boxes of Count Chocula cereal. The book he receives in the mail is so much more than he expected.  Instead of a paperback, Al gets a heavy leather bound book addressed to him and immediately his life starts to change dramatically.

From the moment Al starts to read the book, he realizes something is weird.  The spells in the book are working for him as a disastrous incident in his science lab demonstrated.  Al can raise the dead.  Now he’s a boy with a plan and the ability to raise the dead.  That plan? To raise his dead father and get his family back together.  But so many obstacles block his path.  The man his mother is dating is hateful and abusing, too bad he is also Al’s psychiatrist. An evil group called the Coalition operates a school for Necromancers and they will do everything in their power to bring Al into their fold. Suddenly Al’s world is full of ghouls, ghosts, vampires, and talking dead frogs.  What’s a young budding necromancer to do when danger is all around him in a world turned more dark and scary than usual?

Missouri Dalton has created an instant classic for older teens and adults alike with Necromancy and You, the second story in the Guidebook series.  Never have I been so enthralled by a young 15 year old like Al Skelton.  As created by Dalton, Al is a brilliant, depressed social outcast, who lives for his Raising the Dead comics and memories of his old family life.  His father died five years before when Al was 10, an event that happened while his dad was away on business so Al never got to say goodbye. Since then, his mother has turned cold and distant, spending all her time either at work or with her  new boyfriend, a sadistic man who also happens to be Al’s psychiatrist.  With his present life a nightmare, Al would like nothing better than his family back together again, happy and whole, an impossibility considering his dad is dead.  If this description starts to conjure up visions of Harry Potter, then yes, there are similarities.  But for me, I find Al Skelton far more interesting and quite a bit darker.  He is also far more sarcastic and self aware than Harry seemed to be.  But I guess that comes with being a Necromancer. albeit a budding one as well as being a bit of a smartmouth.

Dalton’s narrative is so clever, so enthralling and her main character so charismatic and appealing that the reader is pulled in instantly, immediately hooked on Dalton’s world building and Al’s life. Oh the life of a teenager at 15, it’s such a tough one.  Hormones are raging, poised between child and adult, the world can be a harsh place, especially if that teenager is just a little different from everyone else.  Dalton takes this truism and gives us a darker version.  Al doesn’t just think everyone is out to get him, they really are.  Lonely, upset and missing his father and the way his family used to be? That should sound familiar to any number of kids these days. And if the normal world is scary place for them, what would happen if you then find out that vampires, ghouls, zombies and ghosts are real and you are not quite human?

Lucky for us, we get to find out as Al goes from normal teen to powerful Necromancer and beyond.  This is how it all starts:

When the package arrived, that clear crisp morning on the twenty-third of October, I knew it would be a good day. The package was green, vibrant and shiny, tied with black string. The address label was white with black letters that spelled my name.

Alter Skelton

215 Bridge Lane

Verity, IL 34055

It was a package I’d been waiting for seven weeks and three days. Waiting ever since I mailed in the coupon out of the back of Raising the Dead along with the box tops from three boxes of Count Chocula cereal. The ad had caught my attention immediately, gleaming on the slightly thicker glossy paper of the back cover, in bright green and black and white.

Learn to control the forces of life and death! This book will change your life!

I knew in a heartbeat I would do anything to get my hands on it. So despite my normal tendency toward not eating breakfast, I ate it. I also started to act less strange around my mother to decrease suspicion. And now, on a Saturday morning, I had my book.

I took the parcel immediately to my room. My mother was out shopping, so I had a good couple hours to peruse the book before shoving it behind the vent cover where I kept my issues of Raising the Dead and the pornographic magazine Tommy had foisted on me after his mother started cleaning his room again.

And then later on, once Al is safely in his room:

I cleared the detritus off of my bed, mostly clothes, and unwrapped the parcel.

The book was heavy, and as I tore away the paper, I noticed it was not the paperback copy I’d expected from the photo in the back of the comic. The cover, by the feel, was leather, black. On the very front there was incised decoration: bright green lines indented as a border around a white skull that felt and looked like bone. Over the skull, in silver lettering, was the title.

Necromancy and You!

Underneath the skull was a secondary title. From A to Zombie

There was no author listed. On the interior page was a notation.

A Stone House publication copyright 1344. Do not redistribute. Books sold without covers are considered stripped books; the house nor the author receives payment. Please refrain from purchasing stripped books.

And on the next page.

Welcome, young master! You have chosen to take the first step in a wonderful journey! Herein are the methods, practices, and rules of the way of Necromancy! Please read the entire first chapter thoroughly before proceeding to the Practical Applications to ensure safety!

Well. Safety was important. One wouldn’t want to raise anyone on accident or anything. No need to get the neighborhood riled with corpses walking about. Or skeletons. Or both.

No, secrecy was key here.

The neighbors were too nosy as it was. Then again, so was my mother.

And from the moment Al opens the book and begins to read, his journey (and ours) has started.  There is no going back, not that he would want to of course, at least in the beginning. Al has a unique voice, it’s quirky, it self effacing and it definitely belongs to a teenager.  It has just that right amount of young perspective and cluelessness while still sounding aware and confident.  How I love this boy.  Al is also remarkably resilient and he has to be. Because before him are so many unpleasant truths about his world and horrifying events to cope with that the ability to take such things in stride is necessary for his survival.

Along his journey he also meets a cadre of remarkable personalities and creatures, some friend, some foe, and some just well….we just don’t know where they stand.  But all of them are exquisitely created.  They team with life or unlife (!) as the case may be.  Some are personalities that we have met already in Vampirism and You (Guidebook #01), including that m/m couple of foster vampire Duncan and 17 year old Louis.  They loom large in Al’s future but more than that I won’t say.  You will have to discover the details for yourself.  All the characters involved are memorable, some charming, some chilling and several downright evil.  But no matter what side they fall on, good or bad, they are all believable and realistic right down to the smallest detail.

Dalton moves her narrative along at a swift and smooth pace and you will want to scamper along with her, wanting to rush to see where the plot is taking Al and you next.  But slow down, don’t miss any of the details, even the ones that seem so insignificant.  There is so much layering here, of plot twists, relationship dynamics, family dynamics, young love (more on that later), the trials and tribulations of growing up….you name it and Missouri Dalton has incorporated it into her story.  But  Dalton does so effortlessly, her narrative never feeling jumbled up or dense.  Really, this is an outstanding book in a remarkable  series.

There are some things that should be noted. Necromancy and You as well as the Guidebook series are categorized as a YA book, a category I do agree with one limitation.  I don’t feel it is appropriate for anyone under the age of 15 (Al’s age).  While a kiss between the hero and heroine is the sexiest this gets, there are mild suggestive comments for the sexual activities of a few other couples.  Nothing explicit, nothing even major, but its there.  My limitations pertaining to age is more along the lines of the traumatic events that occur.  Al is hurt numerous times and while we are spared the details, it happens and younger children might be upset. People die and there are other potentially violent  scenes.  They are necessary for the book and work beautifully within the narrative.  Most of the violence is “off stage” as it were, but the emotional impact is huge.  These events are as beautifully constructed as the rest of the story so yes, you will feel them just as Al does.  This is an emotionally moving, heartfelt and heartrending story.  It has the power to bring tears to your eyes even as they are rolling down our hero’s face.

In addition to giving us an intrepid young man, Dalton gives us an equally resourceful heroine. This is a minor romance happening within the storyline.  Al is straight and there is a slight romance starting here.  One that I suspect will grow over the course of the series, along with that of our m/m couple Louis and Duncan.  Again, like every other teenage, young love finds a way, no matter your sexual preference.  But this series is geared towards suspense and mystery of the supernatural kind.  The romances that occur are secondary to the main focus of the series,  a battle brewing against good and evil, that eternal conflict with surprising elements to each side.  I wanted to order print copies immediately and go running along crowded sidewalks, passing them out and yelling at them to  “read this book”!!!!!  Teenagers, young adults, old adults, and everyone in between needs to read this book, invest themselves in the series.

As you may have guessed, I enthusiastically recommend this book and this series.  I will leave you with a few thoughts from Al himself:

I just couldn’t take normal life seriously.

“Mr. Skelton, are you paying attention?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, then you can complete the problem on the board.”

Do. Not. Kill.

That should not be anyone’s daily mantra.

While it may not be ours, I love that it is Al’s.  Run, fly, do whatever you have to do, but get this book!

Cover art.  I love the cover.  Doesn’t it seem just right for a educational tome?

Sales Links:  Torquere Books  |    Amazon | Buy It Here

Here is the Guidebook stories in the order they were written:

Vampirism and You (Guidebook #01) (strictly M/M)

Necromancy and You (Guidebook #02) (romance is hardly there at all)

Book Details:

ebook, 206 pages
Published July 3rd 2013 by Prizm Books
ISBN1610404939 (ISBN13: 9781610404938)
edition languageEnglish
series Guidebook 

 

A Barb, A Zany Old Lady Review: Boyfriend For The Weekend (Boyfriend #1) by Diana DeRicci

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Boyfriend for the Weekend coverJayden Sindler’s sister is getting married, and she’s extremely adamant that he be sure to bring a date to Florida where the wedding party will be spending the five days before the wedding getting acquainted and having a mini-vacation before the big day. Stressing the names of her friends who don’t care that Jayden is gay and will “man hunt” him all week, she finally makes her point. So when he’s out with his best friend Tim and meets not only Tim’s new boyfriend Bill but also Bill’s cousin, Nash, he decides to ask if Nash would be interested.

It doesn’t hurt that Nash is gorgeous, tall and lean with long dark hair, eyeliner-highlighted eyes and a smile that captures Jayden’s interest immediately. But Bill has reservations about letting Nash go, since Nash is newly out and actually moved in with Bill to escape his homophobic father. Nash has never had a boyfriend, nor any opportunity to explore his sexuality, but it’s a chance for Nash to relax and be away from his father in a safe environment, so when Jayden swears he will keep his hands off Nash, Bill relents and nineteen-year-old Nash is allowed to accompany the twenty-six-year-old playboy to Florida.

On the plane, the two decide to act the part of boyfriends, deciding that their act will be more convincing, and after all, they wouldn’t want anyone to think that Nash is a paid escort, would they? But what happens when the pretending becomes real? Not only does Nash lose his heart to Jayden, who treats him with the utmost respect, but Jayden loses his heart to Nash, perceiving the younger man as the sweetest gift he’s ever been given.

Is there any chance their caring and concern for each other could ever be more? And is there any chance Bill won’t kill Jayden if he breaks his promise about remaining hands-off? And last, but not least, is there any chance for them when they re-enter the real world and school and job responsibilities demand their attention?

This is a really sweet story—the kind that put a smile on my face and kept it there throughout the book. There are sexy times and sweet, tender moments, and there are also family conflict and hurt feelings when Jayden realizes how others perceive him. But overall, it’s just plain fun to read this romance. On a negative note, though it ends on a HFN, it does end somewhat abruptly with a “to be continued” at the end of the Epilogue. No cliffhanger, thankfully, but nevertheless, no HEA. I do believe I will be picking up the next story in the series because I enjoyed these guys so much I want to see where their careers and commitment to each other take them. I recommend it to all who enjoy a sweet M/M romance with age gap, virgins, and very little angst. Can’t go wrong with this one.

Cover art by Melody Pond depicts the torsos of two suited men, arms linked, in the top panel of the cover, with a script-style title across the center and a fancy wedding-style place setting across the lower panel. Very bright and cheerful, and it definitely indicates the content of the story.

Sales Links: MLR Press | All Romance (ARe) | Amazon | Buy It Here

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 164 pages
Published August 20th 2015 by MLR Press
original title Boyfriend for the Weekend
ASIN B0148RTW1S
edition language English
series Boyfriend #1

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words Author Discovery: Mika on Avril Ashton

authdiscorange copy

Mika on Author Avril Ashton

If you are looking for an author who talks with her readers, I’d say Mrs. A is one of the best ever. She is funny, she is honest and she writes about glorious guys. I just happened to come upon Love the Sinner (Brooklyn Sinners, #1) one day, never heard of the author and decided to give it a go. Well 2 series later and a couple of stand alones I’m hooked on Mrs. Ashton’s writing. I’m always looking forward to her guys. They are masculine, sexy, passionate, gritty and dangerous. Then she writes about those sweet damaged boys who would hurt you more than those other physically demanding guys.  She has some memorable characters; Rafe, Syren, Mateo, Dima, Tek, Xavier, Donovan. Those are just to name a few. She writes about tropes that are not likely commercialized in this genre. I mean if you want recommendations pick up A Sinner Born (Brooklyn Sinners, #3) and (Watch Me) Save You (Run This Town, #4), I’d start from book one on both of those though.

I like that she writes about guys from all different walks of life. From the privileged to the outcast; she writes a web of story with actions that sometimes I have a hard time seeing. One of my favorite characters ever was written by Mrs. A, that guy Syren. She killed it with him. I love him. He was so damaged, but he pulled on my heart strings. I was interacting with Mrs. A the other day on Twitter and I asked her if she ever considered writing a contemporary M/M romance with no destruction. Her response was yes, she wrote So Far Gone. I laughed because peoples response was the opposite of the book. I on the other hand really liked it. It was realistic fiction. Cheating, scandals, death it all happens in real life so when that was put out there I enjoyed it. 

I like her writing because she delivers the feelings, rawness, the love and the passion from her characters. No matter what she puts her characters through they always come out with a HEA. She is automatic-buy for me. I like that she connects with her readers. If you are looking for some passion with your stories then try out Avril. I really like you would like her guys.

About the Author

Avril Ashton Icon

A Caribbean transplant, Avril now lives in Stone Mountain, GA., with a tolerant Spousal Equivalent. Together they raise an eccentric daughter who loves reading and school (not so much school anymore). Avril’s earliest memories of reading revolve around discussing plot points of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys with an equally book-minded mother

Always in love with the written word, Avril finally decided to do the writing in August of ’09 and never looked back. Spicy love scenes, delicious heroes, and wicked women burn up the pages of Avril’s stories, but there’ll always be a happy ending; Av remains a believer of love in all its forms.

You can connect with her as Mika does through (AvrilAsh) Twitter, or through her website and check out Avril Ashton’s Goodread’s page for all her stories.  You can find it here.  Looking for a new contemporary novel to read?  Start with one of Mika’s recommendations, Love the Sinner by Avril Ashton.  Check it out below.

Love the Sinner coverLove the Sinner (Brooklyn Sinners #1)
by Avril Ashton

Detective Gabriel Ashby has never looked twice at another man, yet the criminal across from him, the man he’s interrogating, isn’t like any other. Gabe can’t deal with the sudden, intense need he has for one of NYPD’s Most Wanted. Everyone close to Angelo Pagan ends up dead, with the smug gang leader standing amid the rubble. Gabe would love nothing more than to bust Angelo’s ass and lock him up. So why is he seeing the bastard in his dreams at night?

Angelo Pagan knows attraction to Gabe is suicide. He’s resolute to ignore the chemistry…until a police raid goes wrong. He critically injures Gabe, changing the trajectory of both their lives. Now the two can’t get close enough. They settle into a forbidden affair threatened by lies and betrayal, living on different sides of the law with no way of breaching the gap between them. With the authorities looking to make an example of Angelo, Gabe has to decide if it’s really worth it to hate the sin but love the sinner

Book Details:

ebook, 229 pages
Published May 9th 2012 by Ellora’s Cave
ISBN1419939688 (ISBN13: 9781419939686)
edition languageEnglish
series Brooklyn Sinners #1
characters Gabriel Ashby, Angelo Pagan

A Sammy Review: Where There’s Fire (Panopolis #2) by Cari Z.

Rating: 5 stars out of 5         ★★★★★

WhereTheresFire_600x900Panopolis is a city of stark colors, folks. Right or wrong, black or white, no shades of gray here. Panopolis is epic battles and soaring rhetoric on both sides, and dirty secrets buried so deep beneath layers of lies that you’d need a map to know where to start digging. Moral ambiguity is for stories, not real life. At least, that’s what we’re told.

But the best stories, I’ve found, are the ones that aren’t so clear-cut. No spoon feeding you Truth, Justice, and the Heroic Way, or telling you that every Villain was born flawed from the start, not made into that. The best stories are the ones that make you think and leave you wondering. I think Panopolis needs a new caliber of storytellers, folks. Maybe it’s time to find those maps and ready those shovels.

Maybe it’s finally time for a change in the narrative.

Edward Dinges was once a normal guy in a city of Supers. He worked at a bank, had a plain life… then he fell in love with a Villain and found himself imprisoned. Soon, normal was a thing of the past.

Though he’s been working to harness his new powers, Edward is still trying to gain control over his life. It helps that Raul is always at his side, but it’s time to step out by himself for his first real job as a villain.

But nothing ever really goes as planned. Soon, Edward finds himself needing to fight for Raul’s life and free him from the hands of a true Super Villain. Whether they make it out alive or not, Panopolis will never be the same.

“You made it back. Not a lot of people do. That makes you interesting, maybe worth forming an alliance with. You need to work on making connections, especially if you don’t love to fight for fighting’s sake.” Vibro sounded tired.

“You don’t like fighting either.”

“I like living,” she corrected me.

So, first off, I want to put it out there that I absolutely loved this. The series is set in such an interesting world that it really pulled me right in from the get-go and I continued to be incredibly interested in it even months after reading the first book. Cari does a brilliant job of building a world that is so unique, but in this book, I really felt it resonated with reality.

I’m not sure if it’s that social justice has been on my mind a lot recently or what, but the way Cari writes about the dichotomy in the city, pitting two sides against each other, having this large body of power that rules over everyone and manages to cast aside the undesirables… the book takes massive and frustrating issues and puts it into an abstract and easily digestible manner. What do I mean with that? I mean people can turn their face to the real world and it’s social justice, but if you really read this, you’ll find yourself feeling everything the SuperTruther conveys and not even realizing how much Panopolis resembles the world just outside your door.

Now, onto the characters. Edward continues to grow on me. At first, I felt like he was just as boring as he projected himself to be, but in the first book we got to see his evolution when it came to morals. Now he’s crossed that line and is trying to find himself within his new powers.

Raul was a lot less present in this, but I didn’t really mind that, as I think this story is so much more than a romance. Sure, the romance is there, but the story is just front and center, adorned with action and alliances and… okay, just, really great story telling.

And new characters – Vibro is just freaking fantastic. I mean, she has purple hair! On top of that, she seems to have such an interesting personality and I would love to learn more about her and her brother.

The only downside I can think of is that the editing was off a bit. There was a lot of misplaced commas and such. But besides that, it was great.

I can’t wait for the next book in the series. Cari set us up for a great sequel.

The cover by L.C. Chase is very nice. It fits the previous book well and has a nice punch of color. Additionally, getting to see Edward is a nice treat. Great job.

Sales Links:  Riptide Publishing  |  All Romance (ARe) |  Amazon | Buy It Here

Book Details:

book, 113 pages
Published July 13th 2015 by Riptide Publishing (first published July 12th 2015)

A Barb, A Zany Old Lady Review: Shadows Fall by J.K. Hogan

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Shadows Fall coverTitus McGinty is a natural-born chovihano, medium, witch, Shaman—a Romany who has the gift of seeing dead people everywhere he looks. To most people that may sound intriguing, but to Titus it’s a curse. Spirts don’t just hover, they reach out to him, speaking, calling or making eerie noises. Together, at any given moment, the cacophony is enough to drive him crazy, so he never leaves his home or his coffee shop, both warded to keep the spirits out, without his earbuds firmly in place as he listens to whatever music queues up next on his iPod.

Most spirits hover in the area where they lived or died, never leaving one place, but recently a quartet of females, all grotesquely maimed, are following him around, trying to get him to help them, and he knows there’s nothing he can do.

Homicide Detective Charlie Hale, closeted, handsome, and the type of guy Titus has a hard time resisting, shows up at the coffee shop Titus owns and slowly wins Titus over. The attraction is mutual, but it’s soon evident that Charlie has never acted on his desire for men until Titus rocks his world. The two act on their attraction, but Charlie is shocked when he finds out that Titus might be more than a material witness to a murder he’s recently discovered.

It’s not Titus’s fault that the spirit of a newly dead man leads him into the building where his body is lying shortly after he’s been murdered. The biggest issue is that he has the same markings as the four female spirits who have been haunting Titus and has now joined the others in their pursuit. Titus wants to help, but he also wants peace and quiet so he sends for his grandmother, the Shaman of their gypsy tribe and the only person who might be willing to help him figure out how to keep out the spirits he doesn’t want but communicate with those he does.

Between his grandmother showing up, and Titus’s discovery of that body, his life goes into chaos. Charlie is pressuring him to reveal how he found the body, Charlie’s cop partner is pressuring both of them by threatening to arrest Titus, and the spirits are threatening his sanity by continually trying to get him to understand something. By the time, the chaos is sorted, Titus is on the radar of the serial killer and may become the next victim before he can help Charlie solve the crime.

This is just a very brief summary of a story that was shockingly good. Shocking to me because I’ve never read this author’s work, and I’m not a huge fan of gruesome murder stories. However, this was very well-written, with rich detail and an intricate plotline that piqued my interest.

Both the primary and secondary characters were well-developed and captured my attention right from the beginning of the book. I like a story which engages me immediately, and this certainly did that. Titus was feisty and independent, yet so emotionally needy for close contact with another human being that when Charlie walked into his life, he soaked up the attention like a sponge. And Charlie, tough guy detective and closeted gay man, was so hard shell on the outside with a soft chewy center, i.e. tenderness on the inside, I found myself rooting for him to win Titus’s heart. Grandma Hester Faa was a hoot—picture Ester from the Golden Girls of yesteryear. She too was feisty and took no backtalk from anyone, particularly from some gaje cop who was sleeping in her grandson’s bed. Other support characters could easily constitute a recurring cast for future spinoffs from this story, and judging by the way the author ended the book, I’d say it’s highly likely there will be some.

Actually, the one thing that kept my rating from being five stars was the ending of the story. It felt rushed, with a few subplots left outstanding, including the fate of Titus’s missing employee, Titus’s own future standing with his family and grandmother—will it be closer now or go back to being estranged?—and Charlie’s relationship with his partner—a partner who was very on again-off again. I’m sure much of the reason things stand the way they are at the end of the story are to tie into a future book, however the transition wasn’t smooth and simply felt too rushed and incomplete.

I would recommend this to those who like a creepy mystery with a paranormal element along with some blood and gore all mixed in with their M/M romance. Throw in a little feisty granny and some mighty hawt sex scenes with a virginal cop, and you’ll likely really enjoy this one as much as I did.

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The cover, designed by J.K. Hogan, is a photo depicting a young man, with dark hair and dark complexion with a background of a graffiti-marked underground tunnel. Once the story is complete, readers will understand the symbolism of the tunnel, and the young man is an attractive version of Titus McGinty.

Sales Links:  Wilde City Press  | All Romance (ARe) | Amazon | Buy It Here

Book Details:

ebook, 329 pages
Published June 10th 2015 by Wilde City Press
ISBN13 9781925313246
edition language English