Too much horny, not enough ghosts.

Paranormal romance really isn’t my thing, though I have nothing against it. I was a teen at the height of the Twilight and True Blood era, and I have read and seen enough vampires and werewolves to last me the next decade. That being said, I had to read two paranormal romance titles for our ARRT seminar, and wanting to stay away from the norm I found this title to be something a bit different than the normal Vampire/Werewolf/Shapeshifter fare.

If you’re reading this looking for a good paranormal romance, you’re in the wrong place. This book isn’t bad by any means, but I don’t think I’d classify it as a strong paranormal story. It’s more a historical romance with ghosts as a backdrop. I was slightly disappointed with that, as the description really sold me on the ghost/medium appeal with the plot.

Bitter Spirits takes place in San Francisco in the 20s. Aida Palmer is a spirit medium to cuts herself on the thigh in order to summon the spirits of people’s dead loved ones. She has a show in a popular speakeasy, and stays for a few months before traveling to another city to put on her act there. While arriving to her show one night, Aida meets Winter Magnusson, a notorious bootlegger who we come to find has been hexed and now has ghosts haunting him all over the place. He pays Aida to help summon and banish the ghosts following him, and in the process the two lust over one another nonstop for about 200 pages while trying to find out who cursed Winter and how to end it.

I wish I had strong feelings on this book either way because the premise sounds cool, but man I found it boring. It’s a competent romance with some history and paranormal in the mix, but it isn’t anything that leaves me dying to continue the series. The most I can say about this book is that it is horny a.f. Aida and Winter are always lusting after one another and basically on the edge of orgasm just by existing, which is all fun and games until it goes on for 100 pages and you forget there’s even an underlying plot to this book. It just felt that their constant horniness took away from the overall story-line and I would forget who secondary characters were because they’ve been off-screen for so long while we deal with Winter’s weird freckle fetish. Yeah it’s totally a thing, he mentions freckles at least 20 times.

Overall the writing is fine, the romance is pretty good, but everything else seems to fall by the wayside.

Title: Bitter Spirits
Author: Jenn Bennett
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 317
ISBN: 9780425269572

Three Descriptors: Spirited, Accessible, Steamy

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Second Grave on the Left by Darynda Jones
High Spirits by Alice Duncan
Quicksilver by Amanda Quick
Rememberance by Meg Cabot