“The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” – Italo Calvino
Gravedigger’s Tavern wasn’t always a tavern. At one time it was simply a Victorian home that has, since its origin, become a house of horrors, a place enlightened by a darkness so evil that the spirits of the long-suffering dead haunt the in-between realms, searching for escape. It is a place where things go bump in the night, a place where Ash Lucroix and his co-workers begin experiencing strange phenomena that, at first glance, seem easily explained away. But Gravedigger’s is a something wicked this way comes sort of place; a double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble sort of place. A you’d best start believin’ in ghost stories, Dr. Case. You’re in one kind of place. It is a place where a long-dead evil seeks out the lost, and yearns to drag them into his own special brand of hell.
And Ash could very well have a one way ticket there.
Wyatt Case is the head curator for the Virginia Historical Society, whose job is on the line if he can’t come up with an exhibit to draw crowds to the museum. Ash is a flair bartender at Gravedigger’s, a man who is unlike anyone Wyatt has ever met—or wanted—but their attraction to each other is immediate and undeniable. Their first meeting leads to a bout of hot, drunken sex; though in a display of oops-I-totally-effed –up, Wyatt sneaks out afterwards without a word or backward glance, unsure of himself, of what had just happened, or of what to do about a man to whom he shouldn’t have been attracted in the first place. Wyatt treats Ash like a one-and-done but quickly comes to regret it, because it seems Ash Lucroix is a man Wyatt won’t soon or easily forget.
The trick is they both need to survive long enough to discover if there will be a future for them to look forward to.
The countdown to the Gravedigger’s Brawl is filled with creepies and crawlies and spooks and shivers, and the very distinct possibility that Ash may well be losing his mind as things get stranger and more macabre, not to mention more malevolent. Wyatt and his best friend Noah Drake begin digging into the very sordid history of the house, and the deeper they dig, the more frightening the house’s history becomes, as they unearth the crimes of a vicious and sadistic man who has managed to cross the thin barrier between the physical world and his purgatory.
The Gravedigger’s Brawl is a spooky/sexy/sublime ghoulies and ghosties story that throws in a little romance on the side. Or maybe it’s a spooky/sexy/sublime romance that throws in the ghoulies and ghosties on the side? Either way, Abigail Roux has delivered. I was going to go on there, but that’s really all there is to say. Seems to be my opinion of all the books I’ve read by this author, which is why she remains a favorite.
Abigail Roux is a GayRomLit participating author. You can find her blog HERE.
