Magical Midlife Madness
by K.F. Breene
First book, Leveling Up series
Paperback – Independently published February 18, 2020
Language : English
Paperback : 330 pages
I don’t normally read what is called ‘romance fiction.’ The samples I’ve seen tended to be both witless and dreary, and some would make you swear right off sex. But this Amazon kindle freebie caught my eye because it was described as humorous (a romance novel?) and took place in a small California mountain town, much like the one I infest. I’ve started a dozen or so of these free Kindle offerings, and most (but not all) were evident rubbish in thirty pages. In fairness, some of the rejects weren’t bad; they just didn’t engage me.
At age forty, our heroine, Jacinta (Jesse) is at loose ends. Her only child has just left for college, and her husband has decided to do a little levelling up of his own, and “left for greener pastures.” Why anyone would want arm candy full of gophers and cow pats is anybody’s guess, but Jessie, far from embittered, is actually relieved to be cut loose from a control freak who micromanaged how she ironed his shorts. So she’s free, and the divorce left her with financial options.
She decides to “crash” at her parents; house while she figures out What Next. The description of that house (everything in it is brown) and the ‘rents (emotionally dingy earth-toned as well) highlights the humor that runs through the entire story.
She meets up with her oldest and closest friend, Diane, and after relating some of the events during her brief stay with her folks (emotionally equivalent to being stuck on a Greyhound Bus at night, forever) Diane mentions her aunt’s place, Ivy House, and that it needs a caretaker. Jessie visited it once, when she was about ten, and remembers it was a weird but pleasant place out in the middle of nowhere, and with a huge hedge labyrinth, and a trap door that opened into vacant air some thirty feet above the ground. Weird, but at least not Greyhound despair weird. It sounds like a good way to get a little privacy and change of pace while making a little money and sorting out what to do next. She accepts the job offer.
Ivy House is in the town of O’Brien, a small wide spot in the highway that is far enough up in the Sierra foothills to qualify for “thank gawd I don’t live in the valley.” Grapes are the main local crop, and vintners compete for the seasonal tourist trade. Tourists and “normal” townsfolk are referred to as “Dicks and Janes.”
But a sizeable percentage of the townfolk aren’t normal. It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that there are a fair number of vampires, gargoyles, goblins and were-creatures assuming human forms in the town, and that most of them have some sort of connection with Ivy House.
But they are small town folk, simultaneously caring and loving and helpful, and filled with petty jealousies and minor feuds and endless gossip. Creatures that are centuries old carp about one neighbor’s drinking, or rose garden. (Many of them, along with the Gothic Victorian Ivy House, predate California and may well predate North America.) One neighbor chucks rocks at friends and foe alike, and every so often, the local cops, unawares and far out of their depth, haul her in on a 5150 for 72 hour observation. Normal life in a small town.
There is the requisite creepy butler, whose initial “You rang?” intonation is deliberately designed to remind the protagonist (and us) of Addams Family’s Lurch.
And of course, there is the necessary hunk for Jessie to get a case of the palpitations and drips over because that’s utterly central to the genre. He owns one of the local bars, and is the informal town boss. His name is Austin Steele because of course Austin Steele, (in town never just “Austin” or even “Mr. Steele”; always “Austin Steele”) and he is a were-creature, supposedly an alpha. I won’t spoil the fun by saying which creature, but I frowned when I found out, since the critters involved don’t have packs, or normally even groups of any kind, and so don’t have alpha males. But then, I’m dealing with vampires, werewolves, goblins and small town loonies, and I draw the line at what amounts to a nature documentary error? Get it together, Zepp, and stop throwing nerd turds at your readers.
But he is a hunk, a extremely powerful and gentle force capable of insane violence. At one climatic point, the following occurs after he shifts back to his human form, minus clothing:
“’Why do I feel…’ Austin flexed. Allll of him flexed, including his not-so-private bits.
“Niamh [the rock thrower] flinched away and scowled. ‘Jaysus. That thing has its own time zone. Go get yer trousers and stow it away.”
I’m happy to report that Jessie doesn’t melt into a puddle of hormonal goo and live happily ever after as doggy-boy’s own personal fleshlight. Indeed, the House has chosen her and is testing to see if she will be a new House master, a role that may give her even more power and influence than Austin Steele.
It’s the first in an eleven book series, and I liked the first one enough to get the second one. Strange enough that I would read (and review) a romance novel, but this was so good that I may read a romance novel series.
I suppose at my age dementia is always a possibility. Perhaps I’ll soon be sitting on my porch and chucking rocks at passers-by.
But it seems more likely that it’s just that K.F. Breene is that good a writer and has developed a winning (and winsome) format.
Available on Amazon, free to Kindle subscribers.