Strange Neighbors by Ashlyn Chase
Paperback, 384 Pages
2010, Sourcebooks Casablanca
ISBN: 9781402236617
Series: Book 1 of Strange Neighbors
Synopsis
He's looking for peace, quiet, and a little romance...
There's never a dull moment when hunky all-star pitcher and shapeshifter Jason Falco invests in an old Boston brownstone apartment building full of supernatural creatures. But when Merry MacKenzie moves into the ground floor apartment, the playboy pitcher decides he might just be done playing the field...
A girl just wants to have fun...
Sexy Jason seems like the perfect fling, but newly independent nurse Merry's not sure she's ready to trust him with her heart...especially when the tabloids start trumpeting his playboy lifestyle.
Then pandemonium breaks loose and Merry and Jason will never get it together without a little help from the vampire who lives in the basement and the werewolf from upstairs...
Review
Strange Neighbors is a cute paranormal romance. Its many characters of varied supernatural flavors suggests potential for a long running, shifting perspective series. I look forward to future books in the series because while I didn't love this book, the premise itself is wonderful and I think some of Strange Neighbors's secondary characters will make perfectly fascinating leads.
Merry is a wonderful character. She's sweetly naive, yet not completely clueless to the world around her. She takes things in stride, and as a human about to discover an entire supernatural community in her new apartment building, that's important. The thing that threw me with Merry was her sweet demeanor didn't completely mesh with her aggressive sexuality. At first I took it as a case of being proper outside the bedroom and wanton in it, but after a while it just seemed like a little girl trying too hard to be strong and sexy to entice a man. She states that she isn't too experienced, so at first it was normal, but towards the end the bedroom attitude still didn't seem to fit the rest of her personality.
Jason's big secret was alluded to relentlessly for the first half of the book, so obviously I was looking for either some clues along the way. The big revelation wasn't hinted at beforehand and I found it something of a disappointment. This disappointment was compounded by some of the secondary characters in the book. With a vampire, werewolf, ghost and pair of witches in the building already, I had expected the author to make Jason's supernatural type something a little less similar to another tenant. He obviously wasn't going to be a mummy or zombie, but he could have at least been a faerie or something.
I wasn't impressed with Jason's supernatural species, nor Merry's seeming to sexually playact. As the book progressed, I found myself caring less and less about the couple and their relationship which sort of ruins a romantic type book. The thing that really kept this book going for me was the pair of witches, Gwyneth and Morgaine, as well as the vampire, Sly. These characters are the reason I'll be continuing the series.
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