Review: Horror romance?  Well, here you go...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 23, 2013
Although not, to me, as well written as her "Widdershins" and "Threshold" series, which are also paranormal/mystery/horror/romance tales, Jordan L. Hawk's "Hainted" is for sure an exciting, well-plotted and very romantic yarn set in North Carolina.I rather like the idea of a normal real-world setting in which an element of the paranormal is inserted as a sub-culture - acknowledged by some, but disregarded by most.  Here we find Dan, a rural boy dragged back home from college to his dead parents' farm to care for his younger siblings. Overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and failure, he has turned his back on the legacy of magical skills taught him by his mother.  Repressing his gay side as much as his magical side, Dan just wants to give his brother and sister a normal life, eking out a modest living with organic farm produce.Enter Lief, an abused street kid turned necromancer, now on the hunt for the man who once saved his life. He's trying to avenge the murder of a friend, and stumbles into Dan's isolated farm looking for answers.And then all hell breaks loose.I love a good romance, but I am a little tired of clunky, slightly ham-fisted romance. I loved Dan and Lief as a couple, and liked them individually as good men weighted down with their own sense of guilt and unworthiness.  But in this early novel, Hawk does a little too much telling rather than showing.  She smooths this out significantly in her later books.But if you like paranormal themes and gay romance - you'll have fun reading this.