Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Titus 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

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