Title: Resurrection Reprise
Author: Hailey Turner
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 413 Pages
Category: Urban Fantasy
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: Hailey Turner writes high stakes battles with low odds of survival. That’s part of the fun, though—the breathless anxiety of knowing her MCs will make it, but still having to read your way through it just to be sure.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Spencer Bailey has spent his entire life under government oversight for something he can’t change: his magic’s affinity for breaking souls. After surviving the end of the world, Spencer joins the Supernatural Operations Agency with the intention of keeping his head down and his hands clean.
Tasked with tracking down a stolen artifact, Spencer wants to run his first case with the SOA by the book. The master vampire of the Seattle Night Court won’t make that easy. Takoma is demanding and possessive, used to getting what he wants, and he lures Spencer into his Night Court with the seductive promise of freedom.
In the Pacific Northwest, ghosts are crawling out of the woodwork, demons are on the rise, and Spencer can’t afford to make a mistake. Torn between the life he should lead and the one Takoma is offering, Spencer has to make a choice that won’t break his soul, but it might just shatter his heart.
Review: Being a huge fan of Hailey Turner’s Soulbound series, I was excited to revisit this -verse, and I Big-L Love that Wade Espinoza played such a pivotal role in Spencer Bailey’s return as the MC who gets his personal dose of the type of die-a-rama Turner likes to serve. Wade will never not be my favorite dragon, and Resurrection Reprise would have been a lesser book without him.
Spencer is a newly-minted agent with the SOA and has been tasked with finding an artifact capable of terrifying things—as so many artifacts are wont to be. And he knows whose help he needs, and wants, to make inroads on the case. Spencer is familiar with Takoma, the master vampire of the Seattle Night Court, thanks to them fighting alongside each other at the end of the world. Or what would have been the end of the world had the good guys not won. The nature of Spencer’s new case gives him an excuse for some close proximity with Takoma, albeit on the downlow. And that’s exactly where the mage wants to be. Our Spencer has a bit of a danger and submission kink, and Takoma is more than happy to oblige. What the vampire isn’t so obliging about is helping the US government.
Takoma is centuries-old and figures into the case in more ways than simply Spencer’s Confidential Informant. Takoma isn’t a fan (to say the very least) of the colonizers and the fact that his people were murdered and forced off their land at the hands of white men who were abetted by the government. Which is not only why Takoma is supremely territorial but also why he isn’t thrilled to be tied up in the case to retrieve a stolen artifact only to return it to the government that stole it in the first place. This wedges Spencer firmly between a rock and a hard place. But as time goes on, it’s clear on which side his personal loyalties lie.
For those who might go into this book expecting a romance, it’s not. Takoma is possessive, because it’s his nature, and Spencer falls under the category of the one Takoma has claimed. Spencer, while he knows it may not be prudent to get caught up with the master of the Seattle Night Court, can’t seem to resist the pull, not to mention the risks. So not a soul bond in the way Patrick and Jono are bonded, but Spencer and Takoma are connected to each other in the way of vampire and human. The Happy-for-Now ending was the right way to end the start of their relationship rather than tying things up with a hasty romantic bow.
Hailey Turner writes high stakes battles with low odds of survival. That’s part of the fun, though—the breathless anxiety of knowing her MCs will make it, but still having to read your way through it just to be sure.
You can buy Resurrection Reprise here: