Two men fall in love thanks to a perceptive matchmaker—a ghost.
When librarian Payne MacGregor calls the Supernatural Explorers for assistance after months of ghostly activity in his family’s centuries-old mansion, he’s not expecting they’ll be that helpful. For their part, the Supers, five gay men working together on a supernatural TV show, are just excited about the possibility of finding a house that’s actually haunted. Their first visit is nearly their last, as Will, one of the Supers, starts bickering with Payne —an inauspicious beginning to their relationship. But after they make up and all grab dinner at the Silver Flyer Diner, the Supers are back on the case, and not a moment too soon given the amount of activity they witness. They soon determine there are multiple entities in the house—one or more malevolent, but at least one who cares for Payne. Payne believes it to be his grandmother, especially after she traps him with Will for hours and they realize their intense attraction to each other. As they continue to explore their feelings, however, the murderous force in the house continues to build, and Payne may need to risk his life in order to truly end the haunting of his home and the danger to all of them. With alternating spooky and explicit scenes, Michael builds tension and releases it repeatedly throughout the story. The prose is occasionally workaday and overly expository, but the chemistry between the heroes allows the plot and characterization to carry the day. This is the second book in The Supers series (The Supers, 2017), but it can stand alone for new readers.
A contemporary gay paranormal romance for readers who like everything that goes bump in the night.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64108-104-7
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Categories: ROMANCE | PARANORMAL ROMANCE | LBGTQ
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An abused boy fights back, escapes, then returns as an attorney to his beloved hometown, but just as he’s falling in love with a transplanted landscaper, a series of attacks from shadowy enemies jeopardizes their happiness.
“From the outside, the house in Lakeview Terrace looked perfect.” Which of course means that it wasn't. We're introduced to the horrifying Dr. Graham Bigelow, who beats his wife and, increasingly as the boy gets older, his son, Zane. On the night of Zane’s prom, a particularly savage attack puts him and his sister in the hospital, and his father blames Zane, landing him in jail. Then his sister stands up for him, enlisting the aid of their aunt, and everything changes, mainly due to Zane’s secret diaries. Nearly 20 years later, Zane leaves a successful career as a lawyer to return to Lakeview, where his aunt and sister live with their families, deciding to hang a shingle as a small-town lawyer. Then he meets Darby McCray, the landscaper who’s recently relocated and taken the town by storm, starting with the transformation of his family’s rental bungalows. The two are instantly intrigued by each other, but they move slowly into a relationship neither is looking for. Darby has a violent past of her own, so she is more than willing to take on the risk of antagonizing a boorish local family when she and Zane help an abused wife. Suddenly Zane and Darby face one attack after another, and even as they grow ever closer under the pressure, the dangers become more insidious. Roberts’ latest title feels a little long and the story is slightly cumbersome, but her greatest strength is in making the reader feel connected to her characters, so “unnecessary details” can also charm and engage.
Another success for the publishing phenom.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20709-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | ROMANCE | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
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An FBI agent is determined to catch a man who bilks and murders wealthy women, but the chase goes slowly.
Brown (Tailspin, 2018, etc.) has published 70 bestsellers, and this one employs her usual template of thriller spiked with romance. Its main character, Drex Easton, is an FBI agent in pursuit of a serial killer, but for him it’s personal. When he was a boy, his mother left him and his father for another man, Weston Graham. Drex believes Graham murdered her and that he has killed at least seven more women after emptying their bank accounts. Now he thinks he has the clever Graham—current alias Jasper Ford—in his sights, and he’s willing to put his career at risk to catch him. The women Ford targets are wealthy, and his new prey is no exception—except that, uncharacteristically, he has married her. Talia Ford proves to be a complication for Drex, who instantly falls in lust with her even though he’s not at all sure she isn’t her husband's accomplice. Posing as a would-be novelist, Drex moves into an apartment next door to the Fords’ posh home and tries to ingratiate himself, but tensions rise immediately—Jasper is suspicious, and Talia has mixed feelings about Drex's flirtatious behavior. When Talia’s fun-loving friend Elaine Conner turns up dead after a cruise on her yacht and Jasper disappears, Drex and Talia become allies. There are a few action sequences and fewer sex scenes, but the novel’s pace bogs down repeatedly in long, mundane conversations. Drex's two FBI agent sidekicks are more interesting characters than he is; Drex himself is such a caricature of a macho man, so heedless of ethics, and so aggressive toward women that it’s tough to see him as a good guy. Brown adds a couple of implausible twists at the very end that make him seem almost as untrustworthy as Graham.
This thriller about the pursuit of a serial killer suffers from an unpleasant hero and a glacial pace.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7219-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | ROMANCE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | CRIME & LEGAL THRILLER
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