48. Trinity Grove – David VanMeter Smith

Nick Lombard is about to find out that having Italian heritage matters as an American at Cambridge. You see, some Roman soldiers, wearing their red cloaks, massacred an entire village of Celangi back in the 60ADs. And they’re still mad about it in 1990. Every 33 years, once a generation to them, some outlander will get super murdered at the holidays – Midsummer and Samain, at least due to calendar differences from the ancient times they’re getting murdered five days later. I mean, Nick’s an outlander two times over, he not only came across the sea, he’s got that murdery heritage to boot.

He’s also got friends interested in Celtic religion and a sketchy farm commune nearby who super love the old ways. And at first it seems like his new girlfriend, who he met coming out of Trinity Wood, the grove of giant oak trees to be exact, who he also got immediately sexy with when they met in said grove, came from that commune. Or Sweden. She has an accent that’s hard to place. She always controls when they see each other, like she’s got some sort of complicated schedule of drug manufacturing or farming or whatever. And she doesn’t really seem to want to meet his friends. Nick’s all in though, he loves his Gwenillan.

And it turns out she’s got something to do with the ancient history of the area and the latest super gruesome murder and a nice brooch. This was a fun read with the perspectives represented running around each other to figure out what was actually coming to pass.

Sometimes finding a sweetheart in the woods is not all it’s cracked up to be and then there’s Salem and Hen Wen.