Review: Nice story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 14, 2014
The first thing that intrigued me about this book was the idea of a woman being forced to stay in a house she is restoring only to find out she’ll be sharing it with ghosts and an owner with a troubling family past. Sometimes you have to wait awhile to get to the paranormal parts, but these ghosts were definitely an active part of the story and didn’t take long to make an appearance. Not to worry, there is no chain rattling or wailing. You discover early on a woman was killed fifty years before and wants Josie to find out what happened. That woman is going to push Josie deeper and deeper into a past that many of the people still alive feel should be left alone. This is in addition to a male ghost haunting the house that had some sort of relationship with the dead female. Then there is Patrick, the handsome home owner, who doesn’t make things any easier as he has his own stake in the matter. If she wants to keep him from hampering her investigation, she’s eventually going to have to convince him this is one murder mystery that has to be solved.I had some difficulty feeling the chemistry between Josie and Patrick for more than half of the book. A lot of this is because the two were so heavily influenced by the ghosts (who had been in love while they were alive and pushed those feelings on the main characters) that it was difficult to separate the “live” couple from the “dead” one. Eventually when Josie and Patrick got out and away from the haunted places in the story I could finally see how they naturally acted together. They definitely sizzled. I finally felt it then and really began to root for the two to be together. Considering everything at stake, they had a lot working against them. I was thankful the author didn’t rush to get to the first sex scene and it came much later in the story when the timing felt more appropriate. There might have been an instant attraction between Josie and Patrick, but the love part came slowly as personalities clashed and more than one misunderstanding occurred. Both characters were stubborn and prideful. Most of the time this strengthened their personalities, but there was a time or two where it did seem a bit much.There were two main running plots aside from the romance. First you had the restoration of the house. Now, this is a home that needs A LOT of work–all while two characters fighting an attraction to each other live in it. I absolutely loved the detail and description the author used to show the developments of the house as the story progressed. Maybe I’ve watched HGTV a few too many times, but remodeling is fun to see and the story didn’t skimp on this (though the reader isn’t too inundated with it either). The other plot was figuring out what happened with the ghosts since they obviously feel the need to haunt Josie. You know from the prologue that someone killed the female, but the question is who. There are multiple candidates and no easy answers. I didn’t figure it out until maybe a chapter or so before the reveal. It’s definitely not an easy guess with so many people who had a motive to kill the woman. Expect lots of twists and turns to keep you flipping the pages.Overall, I really enjoyed “For the Love of Jazz”. It had been a while since I’d read a good ghost romance and this one worked well. If you like a good romantic suspense with a touch of the paranormal, I’d definitely recommend it. This might be Elke Feuer’s first novel, but I suspect she has many more good ones to come.Note- I was given an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.