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Sometimes there's a paranormal romance series where there's a slow burn between the romantic leads, maybe with some misdirection along the way, and it takes until the end of the series for them to end up together (The Hollows, for instance). Sometimes there's one where they get together early, but they remain the leads (e.g. Mercy Thompson.) And then there's one like this, where they get together fairly early, and then, several books in, seemingly at random, the story just starts hopping around. Your former leads are now the old married couple, and there are new leads with each book, usually including one totally new character and one side character. ("Romance is catching" is kind of a trope in non-paranormal romance, too, for several reasons. Mostly, it sells books without a whole new cast having to be developed from scratch. That's fine.)

I can live with any of these, I guess. That third option does, of course, mean that the rest of the series will be uneven, depending how much you like the particular side character featured in each installment.

What I mind is when a series that is, admittedly, already a little dark and gritty suddenly goes all-in for "this character was raped and tortured for months on end and is deeply traumatized." That's ... not pleasant and is very much not my thing. I feel like there should be a strong warning on this book, given what a departure it is from the series so far.

I thought that everyone in urban fantasy had agreed that, when you've got a series with some books and some short stories or whatever, readers will be good to go as long as they never skip anything with whole numbers. If there is, like, a prequel labeled "0.5" or a story between books that you call "3.5" or whatever, it'll give you extra viewpoints into some of the characters, but it's not going to be vital to the main plot. So I read book 4, and then I was like "OK, time for book 5." Only, a huge portion of book 5 hinges on a bunch of stuff that happens in a novella in between the two books. It's incredibly irritating and kind of wrecks up the reading experience.

Also, while every book before this one has an ending, this one literally just stops. It's not even exactly a cliffhanger, in my opinion. Just "here's a bombshell that, honestly, feels like it's been telegraphed for a while, and also ... yeah, that's it, no wrapup."

On top of all that, while a number of reviewers say this book needed a content editor -- I mostly don't feel strongly either way on that point -- I will say it definitely needed someone to sit down with the author and say "Karen, friend, this is a 500 year old badass. She isn't going to use the word 'hubby,' except maybe ironically, it certainly should not happen tens of times throughout the book." blehhhhhh

Super irritating, especially in a series that I was really, really enjoying.

I enjoyed this, but I think it needs a content warning for several (mostly pretty short) bits that are written from an abuser's point of view. Those were hard for me to get through.

My other complaint (I gave this three stars; I'm going to say nice things, too) is that the only acknowledgment of homosexuality is done in a homophobic way, someone suggesting that the meanest story about the ghost lady is that she had an affair with a female employee instead of a male one. It wouldn't have been so bad if there had been any queer representation anywhere else in the book, but there really wasn't.

Those two things aside, the writing is good. The story is fun. The ending is satisfying. I was honestly so pleased with the last third of the book that I almost gave it four stars and forgot to include the previous paragraph. If you can live with the two complaints I listed above, and you generally like romance and/or ghost stories, this could be a really fun read for you.

If anyone's read other of Molly Harper's books and could tell me that they are not homophobic, I'd read more of them.