Fish and Ghosts

Title:  Fish and Ghosts

Author:  Rhys Ford

Publisher:  Dreamspinner Press

Length:  240 pages

Rating:  A List

Up All Night Satisfaction

Blurb:  When his Uncle Mortimer died and left him Hoxne Grange, the family’s Gilded Age mansion, Tristan Pryce became the second generation of Pryces to serve as a caretaker for the estate, a way station for spirits on their final steps to the afterlife. Tristan is prepared for challenges, though not necessarily from the ghosts he’s seen since childhood. Determined to establish Tristan’s insanity and gain access to his trust fund, his loving relatives hire Dr. Wolf Kincaid and his paranormal researchers, Hellsinger Investigations, to prove the Grange is not haunted.

Skeptic Wolf Kincaid has made it his life’s work to debunk the supernatural. After years of cons and fakes, he can’t wait to reveal the Grange’s ghostly activity is just badly leveled floorboards and a drafty old house. More than a few surprises await him at the Grange, including its prickly, reclusive owner. Tristan Pryce is much less insane and much more attractive than Wolf wants to admit, and when his team releases a ghostly serial killer on the Grange, Wolf is torn between his skepticism and protecting the man he’s been sent to discredit.

Review: What a fun and fantastic romantic comedy of a ghost story. I loved every moment I spent with this crazy crew of misfits. It had me alternating between cracking up, melting from the heat, and falling right along with these guys.

The world building in this story is very well done, while set in our world, it soon enters into a reality that most of us cannot claim to share. Tristan runs a way station for spirits and he can actually interact with them. While Wolf and his team come into the mansion to show Tristan as a fraud, events quickly open their minds to the possibility of there being much more to this world than most can see.

Tristan is beautiful, artistic and sweetly innocent. He has lived a relatively sheltered and lonely life isolated by his ability to see spirits and the world and his family’s, with the exception of his beloved Uncle Mortimer, inability to understand or accept him. He was funny and nobody’s pushover, I adored him.

Wolf is sexy, sarcastic and a determined skeptic. His business is based on investigating and, up until he comes to Hoxne Grange, disproving hauntings. In his own way Wolf is as isolated and misunderstood by his family as Tristan. He is growly and aggressive, which protects a sweet and loving nature that cannot resist the delectable Tristan. I want him for myself.

Rhys Ford delivers her usual humor mixed with smoking hot sex and a beautifully poetic turn of phrase that had me using the highlight feature throughout.

“The duality of Tristan’s soul lay bare on his face, a delicate, pure innocence striated with a weary, tattered wisdom Wolf wanted to patch together with kisses.”

How do you not fall in love with that? A wonderful new series that has me waiting impatiently for the next book.

Reviewed by Nina