Title: Witchbane
Author: Morgan Brice
Publisher: Darkwind Press
Length: 275 Pages
Category: Paranormal/Fantasy
At a Glance: An engaging and interesting, fast paced paranormal suspense plot, kept me on my toes.
Reviewed By: Lindsey
Blurb: Seth Tanner and his brother Jesse’s fun evening debunking local urban legends ends with Jesse’s gruesome murder. Seth vows revenge on Jesse’s killer – too bad the murderer has been dead for a hundred years. Seth uncovers a cycle of ritual killings that feed the power of a dark warlock’s immortal witch-disciples, and he’s hell bent on stopping Jackson Malone from becoming the next victim. He’s used to risking his neck. He never intended to risk his heart.
Review: I snatched up this book because from what I could see, it was getting really good reviews and I do love me a paranormal/suspense plot that I can get totally engrossed in. Witchbane provides a great foundation, with interesting world building and an exciting journey for the MCs that did keep me mostly invested. The prologue grabbed me right off the bat and started a quick-paced suspense from that point forward. The imagery and feelings produced in the first few pages guaranteed my wanting to know more, especially about what happened to Jesse. The brother’s connection is swiftly established, and I just had to see justice for him, much like Seth. The concept was intriguing; ritual serial killings uncovered send Seth on his journey to save the next target, Jackson Malone.
The romance shoots off like a rocket and quickly builds. Definitely an insta-lust thing happens, along with insta-chaos. Thrown together, with mere days to stop the villain, their emotions are high and the angst level fairly high as well. Tempers rise easily, insecurities surface—especially because they don’t know each other well—secrets are uncovered, and this all happens while they battle through one bad scenario after another. The story is fast paced in both the romantic aspect as well as the plotline; there is barely time to take a breath before they are facing death again. I was anything but bored and sometimes on the edge of my seat.
The pace, however, is also where I think my personal niggles arose. Everything was just a little too rushed. I don’t mind tension and action, but I also like to get a feel for the surroundings and more descriptions setting a scene. There were a couple times a transition in a situation occurred or a change of location happened so rapidly that it gave me mental whiplash. Though there is plenty of sexual chemistry and hot times on page, it lacked a certain something for me. More than likely that is due to the entire plot happening in less than four days, and a lot of it is spent between attacks from outside sources or fighting between themselves, and I personally like a slower build in my relationships. I love a quickly moving plot, but, in this case, I felt it was a detriment to the development and depth of both the characters. In the urgency there were inconsistencies, nothing earth shattering, but these things popped out to me, and I couldn’t let them go once I found the first one—I tended to look for more.
Admittedly, I did guess pretty quickly who the bad guy was. Yet, I still found the ending entertaining, as I didn’t expect some of the twists. It even managed to creep me out a bit. Some threads were not tied up, so I assume there are going to be other books, this just the beginning, because I can’t fathom a reason why certain things happened.
Though I would have liked to see a bit more development and dimension in character and plot, overall this was a solid and engaging story which grabbed and held my interest. If there is another book, I plan to pick it up as I definitely want to see what is in store next.
You can buy Witchbane here:
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