Title: Dark and Disorderly
Genre: Paranormal Romance
FTC Disclosure: Net Galley
"I was standing there naked when my dead husband walked into my bathroom..."
Lillie St. Claire is a Talent, one of the rare few who can permanently dispatch the spirits of the dead that walk the earth. Her skills are in demand in a haunted country, where a plague of ghosts is becoming a civic nuisance.
Those skills bring her into conflict with frightened citizens who view Talents as near-demons. Her husband comes to see her as a Freak; so when Nathan dies after a car crash, she is relieved to be free of his increasingly vicious presence. Lillie expects to be haunted by Nathan's ghost, but not to become Suspect #1 for her husband's murder and reanimation.
But what's most surprising of all is the growing attraction between her and psi-crime detective John Thresher. He thinks that Lillie killed Nathan--and Nathan must agree, because his zombie is seeking revenge. Now she and Thresher must work together to solve her husband's murder--before his corpse kills her...
I finally gave in and got a Kindle at Christmas and one of the first things I did was download all the Net Galley books that the generous publishers had given me to read. I had only read a few as I totally hated to read on my PC. But it was a whole different ballgame reading on the Kindle. The fact that the first book I read on the Kindle, Dark and Disorderly, was purely coincidental. And boy am I glad it was first, because it was fabulous. I loved the trip that Harris took us on and look forward to more books in this series. Please, please say it’s going to be a series.
First of all the opening sentence, “I was standing there naked when my dead husband walked into my bathroom..." now tell me how can that not hook you?
Harris’s characters Lillie and Thresher caused sparks every time they ran into one another. I just loved the spunky spit fire Talent. Her job (talent) was to dispatch ghosts in this alternate world where everyone knew about ghosts, zombies and other such creatures.
Despite the fact that someone or something seemed intent on doing away with her, she was going to do her job. This was a fun read that once I got about a third of the way through, was unable to lay down till I had finished it and solved the mystery. There was a lot of action and excitement that kept me clutching the book (er Kindle). Oh, and the scene where Lillie is hunting a missing girl and the little ditty “Ding dong dell” just made me want to gather the child up, much as Lillie did before I burst into tears. I loved the world that Harris created and hope we will see more of Lillie and Thresher. The only jarring thing I found was some of the “big” words where simpler would have been better. But hey, I got to use the nice feature on my Kindle that immediately told me the meaning
of any words that were in doubt whereas I’d probably not have bothered to double check the meaning if it meant looking it up in Websters. I’ve heard other reviewers compare this book to Harrison’s and Armstrong’s and while I agree, I honestly think it was a whole different take on the paranormal that was outstanding on its own.
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