Review: moving paranormal gay romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 30, 2013
Northern Light E J Russell.ARC supplied by publisher.I have a not so secret love of Gay romance, its surprisingly tender and it's not all Gay Queens...but often romance that's really sensual. This book though, is far more than just a romance, its got elements of suspense, all packed in with some supernatural horror, though thankfully there is the happy ever after I always need :) I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to anything too ghostly, and was reading this at night so once the paranormal part kicked in - and I hadn't realised there was any, not having read the description properly (my bad)  - I wasn't sure if I needed to wait til next day. (Honestly - even spooky YA films like The Mummy are too much for me, and as for Indiana Jones... :) I just can't watch them) but as it happened it was shortish, and I wanted to see how it ended so I continued - and didn't get nightmares, though I did have to skim read stuff that the average teenager, possibly preteens too, would take in their stride!So, we have investigator Luke, who turns up on the trail of his latest job to find his ex lover there. They'd parted on bad terms, but Stefan is nothing like the man Luke remembers, he can still see elements of him but something is wrong with him, he's frail and looks like a walking skeleton. He claims he can't remember doing any of his paintings after he's  finished, and he never sees them, but leaves them to his dealer who collects them.Odd as it sounds Luke's client suggests it may be genuine, but Luke can't accept a supernatural answer even though there are lots of clues pointing to it, until it all comes to a head, along with his long suppressed feelings for Stefan, and its their past, entangled with the past of other characters, that interact and needs de-tangling and completing if they are to survive.Its a lot to pack in to such a short book, but its succinct and done well. Each puzzle has an ending, though there was more to the story than I envisaged. The romance is tender, but not overtly sexual and graphic, more there as a carrier to pull the other elements of the story together it seemed. Still, it was good to see them overcome their pasts, and I liked the way their early years together  slowly unfolded, and we saw how it linked to the others involved, and how they needed to go back and remember in order to move forward together.I enjoyed this, not sure I'd re read it though. Priced at 1.92 for 140 pages it's around average for the genre and its not a "padded out " book, but one where each page counts.Stars: four.