Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Publisher: JCP Books
Length: 204 Pages
Category: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Romance
At a Glance: This volume of shorts is like a delicious, delicious box of chocolates.
Reviewed By: Cassie
Blurb: Victor Bayne sees dead people for a living…and he sees them off the clock, too. After all, ghosts don’t confine their appearances to a psychic medium’s work hours.
From the macabre to the mundane, from titillating to tender, these PsyCop shorts feature stolen moments between the novels. Get a glimpse of Vic’s life with Jacob between cases, from both men’s viewpoints. Gain new insight on their psychic talents by accompanying them on odd jobs, shopping runs and family visits, or simply enjoy some downtime in the cannery.
The twenty short works range in length from flash fiction to novelettes, woven together to create a novel-length narrative of Vic and Jacob’s relationship from a fresh perspective. The stories are gleaned from various sources: anthologies, newsletters, and web, with four all-new pieces to tie the collection together and delve deeper into your favorite PsyCops’ domestic life.
Review: AW YESSSSS. I have never been so happy to be surprised by a book. I had no idea this thing was coming; I don’t know how I missed it, but it was like Santa was real and had the initials JCP, and I woke up Christmas morning to Vic and Jacob under my tree, and I didn’t even know that was an OPTION. Joy to my world, y’all.
So, once more, all together, I’m here for the—”CHARACTERS!” (nice lungs in the back). We should all know this about me by now. So what could possibly be better than 200+ pages of short stories about some of my favorite characters from one of my favorite series, all focused on these people just doing what they do and developing their character arcs? There’s nothing better; that’s a trick question. That’s what this book is! I loved it, of course.
The stories themselves are great. This volume was like a box of chocolates. There was a candy set in the past. Some pieces were love scenes. That piece was from Jacob’s perspective (squee!); this one from Lisa’s. I’d experienced a couple of them before, and they were as tasty as always; a couple bits were new to me. Some were bigger than others. One was even a piece from the future! There was not a coconut or freaky toothpaste flavored candy in the bunch (yup, I’m riding this metaphor all the way to the finish line, folks).
It was lovely. I recommend it for any and everyone who has read and enjoyed the main series. There’s stuff here for all of you. If you haven’t tried the series yet (WHY?!), go read it first. Or heck, go grab it on audio because Gomez Pugh IS Victor Bayne, and he knocks all these books right out of the park. Just do that before you read this book, because these shorts will all make more sense in the context of knowing the series arc. They don’t really work on their own.
My only complaint is very minor. The author lists out the timeline information for all the stories and where they fall in the general series arc at the beginning of the book. THANK YOU FOR THAT. But by the time I was ten pages in, I had no memory of any of that information. It would have been nice if the timeline details of each story were on the title page for that story, instead of in a brick of text all the way at the beginning of the whole thing. It was rough switching back and forth, then scanning through the paragraph format of the story list to find the one I was about to read and place it in the series arc. Annoying, but doable. Really, a very small issue.
So if you love this series, you’ll love this volume. Best of all, this is Volume One, which implies an eventual Volume Two!!! And I believe the author plans to have Mr. Gomez Pugh narrate this as well, so we’ll be seeing it in audio sometime. Good news all around! So go get you some Vic and Jacob chocolate for October Christmas, because apparently Santa JCP thinks we’ve all been very, very good this year (all. The way. To the finish line).
You can buy PsyCop Briefs here:
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