'Wraith' by Angel Lawson

Every so often I finish a book and the last thing I want to do is type up a review. In most cases this feeling is brought on by an extremely mediocre title, a Goldilocks title if you will. Having been not too good and not too bad, 'Wraith' by Angel Lawson falls right onto that fine line and doesn't really give me much to talk about. That said, I'd be shirking my reviewer responsibilities if I left it there, so let's forge on, shall we?

The Good: The love interest, Connor, of our protagonist Jane is one of the better drawn characters of his type in the genre. Believable, well rounded and surprisingly interesting, this character carries most of the story on his shoulders and keeps it moving at a nice, page-turning clip.

The Bad: The adults in this story are, for the most part, unbelievably stupid, one-dimensional and irrelevant. The one exception here is Jane's aunt and that's only because that particular adult was an obvious introspective mirror for Jane's character.

The Bottom Line: This title would be great for a much younger reader just getting their bearings on the YA genre. As for the rest of us hardened veterans... well, it might be worth the time if you're not too concerned about some of the characters making rationale, motivated choices but love a good bad boy romance.

"Optical Delusions in Deadwood" (Deadwood Mysteries #2) by Ann Charles

'Optical Delusions' is the second installment of Ann Charles' Deadwood Mysteries. The basic idea behind the series is that single mom, Violet, has moved back to Deadwood with her twin children, becomes a realtor and sells houses to make what living she can. All this while she navigates the waters of a troubled, but steamy romance and tries to sleuth out the details of a classic who-dunnit with a supernatural twist.

But that's not the whole story. Violet might be an average, single mom, struggling to keep her job and her kids fed but she's after the happenings in book one, she's making herself a name as Deadwood's famous Ghost realtor. This leads her be contacted by a pair of mousy women who live in a beautiful house, that just so happens to abut an old strip mine, be the location of a grisly murder-suicide and oh yeah... it supposedly haunted. Desperately trying to convince herself and her friends that representing the property is a good idea the facts start to stack against it and the mystery really starts to take off.

As a whole, this installment has definitely been more enjoyable than the last, (see my review of book one here), as Ann Charles seems to have found her stride with this motley crew of characters. While this one was only indulged because of its Free to read with Amazon Prime, you can be sure that I'll be checking out book three.