Author: Tamara Barry
Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496719621
Kensington Publishing
323 Pages
$26.00; $9.99 Amazon
October 30, 2018
⭐⭐⭐
Ellie has an ailing sister to care for, and working as a ghost hunter who doesn't believe in ghosts helps to cover the bills for both of them. When she's lucky, it also pays for the occasional tropical vacation. Her brother doesn't exactly approve, but Ellie figures she's providing a service. On her latest job, though, she may be in for some genuine scares.
The skeptical, reserved, and very rich Nicholas Hartford the III has flown her all the way to his family's ancestral estate in England -- supposedly haunted by a phantom named Xavier. Nicholas thinks it's all just as much a crock as Ellie's business is, but the fact remains that something is causing the flashes of light, mysterious accidents, and other apparent pranks in the chilly, eerie castle. His mother is sure that Xavier is real, and he's willing to employ Ellie if she can get to the bottom of it and put a stop to the nonsense.
While the food and accommodations are somewhat disappointing (dorm-room furniture? Really?), Ellie is finding it an adventure to get to know this eccentric family and their house guests, and to poke around in the nearby village for clues. But when an actual dead body appears -- and subsequently disappears -- at Castle Hartford, she'll have to apply her talent for trickery and psychological insight to solve a flesh-and-blood murder.
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Eleanor Wilde is a con artist who gets people to believe that she can find ghosts and eliminate them, all the while masking as a ghost hunter. She uses cameras and other equipment to find out the truth, and then fakes a séance where she shows them everything is going to be fine. She does this because it's the only way she can afford her sister's health care. Sometimes she even makes enough for a vacation or two.
While her brother hates it, Ellie doesn't care, as long as the paychecks keep coming. But what comes one day is one Nicholas Hartford III who wants her help -- his mother thinks a ghost is haunting them, but he knows it's all a crock -- just like Ellie's business -- but still insists she help them, at her own price. Unable to resist, Ellie accepts the offer, and when she arrived in England, walks into the strangest family she's ever met. Still, she's made a commitment, and she's bound and determined to find out who's staging the haunting, and why...
At first this sounded to be an interesting book, but unfortunately it fell flat almost immediately. I did not like the main character at all. As I stated above, she's a con artist, and doesn't even have a home of her own, preferring to leech onto the people she's working for so she can sleep in a bed. Just lovely. How endearing a person she must be to not only take money under false pretenses (even if she does admit it to some people) but to use them for room and board also. I would have had more respect for her if she had her own place. Ah, well.
At any rate, she goes to Nicholas's family home and meets his odd mother, who serves inedible food for a ridiculous reason since they do have money, after all; his clueless niece, and his extremely vain sister who refuses to realize that she's aging; and her sister's beau, who is loud and boisterous, but is the only person who shows selfless kindness to Ellie.
But in the end, it's the reason for the fake "ghost" that I found implausible. Also kind of gross, but I won't explain more of why I said that. The plot also devolved into a romance more than mystery, and the clues were leading in an entirely different direction all along. How unfair. But the ending gives us a clue to what the next book will be about, although I don't know if I will read it or not. The reason I gave it three stars is because this is a new series, and sometimes the author needs another book or two to hone their characters, so I didn't ding her for that.
More on Tamara Berry's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/tamara-berry/
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