Urban fantasy fun!
I couldn’t wait to read this after finishing the prequel, The Undead Detective. This book takes our main character, Hattie Silverthorne (an amusingly snarky medical examiner who happens to be a vampire), her human personal assistant, Ben, and their delightfully spoiled Shih Tzu, Mr. Figgles, to a paranormal community in the town of Nowhere. Silverthorne goes there at the request of her maker to address the potential problems of a newly introduced recreational drug. True to form, Jennifer Hilt, maintains her “never a dull moment” method of story-telling by allowing an avalanche of misfortune to befall our main characters so that a potentially dry epidemiological study now encompasses multiple murders, revenge, kidnapping, and a fire. This book has it all: mystery, action, forbidden love and a number of greatly diverse characters including, shifters, witches, vampires, demons, and more that each add their unique contribution to the evolution of this fast-paced story.
There is language that some may find off-putting, but it isn’t excessive. There are no truly graphic sex scenes. There are some grammatical and punctuation errors, but I had no trouble overlooking them as I found the unfolding plotline so engrossing and entertaining. I am not a fan of cliffhanger endings and this book does have one, but I will qualify that by saying that it is not the type of cliffhanger where you are left in mid-action. There is an unresolved issue that involves a major character and I would have preferred that to have been handled differently but it did not diminish my enjoyment of this book. Overall, can’t wait for more.