Paranormal romance is not a genre I have read a great deal, but as a fantasy fan I have dabbled in the past, so its not completely new. Comparing Ritual Nightmares to those previous experiences of such books by mainstream authors, I found the story more engaging than most of those.
Ritual Nightmares is all told through the eyes of the mc Kenna, effectively on the run from her childhood when a demon killed her father and little brother. Kenna was consistently written and I enjoyed getting to know her. We catch up with her as she moves to a town called Charming, which, at least on the surface, lives up to the name, but underneath that, there are sinister goings on. Things of which we only scratch the surface in this first book, leaving plenty of scope to delve deeper in the rest of the series.
In terms of overall tone, I found the emphasis rather heavily weighted to the romance over the paranormal for my tastes. At times I found myself imploring the story to skip the love scene and get to the monsters.
Without wanting to get into spoilers, I need to write a bit about Kenna's paranormal romantic interest, Logan. Pretty much throughout their relationship in this book, I don't think I was seeing it in the postive light that the author seemed to trying to portray. On the contrary, I found it rather a toxic affair, at times, albeit a toxic affair that might save her life. His complete disregard for what Kenna wanted and using their chemistry to override her wishes set my teeth on edge. I've known people in relationships like that. The narrative once described Logan as Kenna's drug of choice, but I'm not sure how much 'choice' is really on display, here. That said, I think he means well, so I'm hoping the next book in the series might see some development for both of them and set their relationship on more even terms.
And yes, I do intend to read the next book, because while the above is a criticism in one sense, it's also an indication of how engaged I was with Ritual Nightmares, and as I said at the beginning, that's more than I can say for a number of mainstream offerings in this genre.