Roustabout Carnival of Mysteries Book # 7
LGBTQ Fantasy, Gay Romance, Romantic Fantasy,
Dark Wind Press
August 23, 2023
Kindle
231
Amazon
A con man and a government agent walk into a carnival…
Bartlett Gibson is a necromancer and an agent for the Tennessee Bureau of Supernatural Investigation. He’s hot on the trail of RJ Tucker, a psychic con man who has eluded him at every turn and led him on a merry chase. Pursuit leads to grudging respect in their game of cat and mouse, which becomes a high-stakes game of seduction. Bart chases RJ to the Carnival of Mysteries and realizes that nothing is as it seems. A dark witch’s curse ups the ante, creating a deadline for revenge and redemption, and the clock is ticking.
Falling in love breaks all the rules. Can Bart and RJ stop the witch, break the curse, and find a way around RJ’s spot on the “most wanted” list before time runs out?
Roustabout is a fast-paced MM paranormal romance filled with supernatural suspense, snarky humor, crafty carnival workers, sarcastic ghosts, midway magic, hurt/comfort angst, adversaries-to-lovers tension, and a very happy ending!
Part of the multi-author, shared-world Carnival of Mysteries series. Can be read as a stand-alone.
Review By Ulysses Dietz
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
I continue to love the Carnival of Mysteries books, not just for the individual author’s characters and plot arcs, but for the way in which each one has integrated the theme of the Carnival into their work.
Morgan Brice’s Roustabout is another book set in a universe with magic. Interestingly, the magic doesn’t really ramp up until nearly halfway through the story. Up to that point, the narrative really looks at RJ’s activities, teasing us with information and demonstrating his intelligence, while only truly shedding light on his miserable childhood and its aftermath. RJ is seeking vengeance, but he’s also finding justice.
Bart, who’s the magical detective working for the Tennessee bureau trying to track down the con artist “Ghost Boy,” has no idea that the cute redhead he hooks up with in the bathroom at a Memphis gay bar is the very man. The reader knows, and that provides a delicious shivery sort of tension until it all begins to explode. I can’t give details, but I loved the back and forth between RJ and Bart – because only we, as readers, get to know both main characters and to understand the big picture on both sides.
The Carnival itself doesn’t even appear until after the midpoint of the novel, although there are hints. That was weird – until the Carnival stepped into the action and it all made sense. By this time Errante Ame’s carnival is familiar to the series readers, but in this book it takes on a more active, and emotionally powerful presence. The Carnival’s owner’s name means “Wandering Spirit” in French, and for the first time I really got a sense of the potential enormity of the Carnival’s magical presence in the world. It exists, and has existed for a long time, and offers harmless amusement for the ordinary people of many times and places; but for those who really need it, the Carnival is a great deal more. That notion has been present throughout the series, but in this book it somehow really hits home.
As I find my self repeating, the romance novel is like a landscape painting. We all know what’s going on, but the artist’s special skills and little surprises can make each and every one a singular pleasure. From the moment RJ and Bart meet, the reader knows where things will go – or where we hope they’ll go. It’s up to the writer to keep us emotionally involved until the very end. Morgan Brice does a great job with this book. Another winner for the Carnival of Mysteries.
Reviewed by Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
RJ Tucker was a victim of the foster system, a system that brought about the death of his older brother, Mick and the disappearance if his sister Kit. The foster family he and his siblings wound up in was a family that barely fed all the kids or clothed them properly, and medical care was barely available.
As soon as RJ was able to, he ran away and found a family in the various circuses and fairs he found work at. As soon as he was old enough and had learned enough, he began his quest for vengeance against all those responsible for causing pain and suffering for his family.
Bartlett (Bart) Gibson is a witch and necromancer and an agent for the Tennessee Bureau of Supernatural Investigation. He has temporarily been assigned to find Ghost Boy; the term given to the man responsible for conning people. When Bart meets a man at a bar, and they have a quickie in the men’s room, having no idea that he had come up close and personal with the very man he was looking for.
RJ has set his sights on the foster family that caused him and his siblings so much suffering. Unfortunately, the foster system has in so many cases been a horror for the young children who have lost so much and need a loving home. Now RJ has enough information to release to the media about his old foster family and save all the other children still suffering under their care. Once the information reaches the media the authorities are quick to act otherwise it would be hard to keep face.
One more con and RJ is done, the warehouse that was responsible for his brother’s death because of negligence and taking dangerous short cuts. There was a banker, a policeman and none of them came out unscarred. RJ never kept money, in fact the checks he received in his cons were also sent to the media. All the time Bart is on the search for the man he believes is guilty of conning innocent people until he goes on his own to investigate and realizes he is dealing with a Robin Hood.
When Bart and RJ meet up again, they are both unaware of who they truly are, but they begin to feel a bond, a bond that will be very hard to keep when they realize that one of them is wanted for crimes and the other is the one searching for him. Bart and RJ’s childhood was as different as night and day, RJ suffered horrors in foster care and Bart grew up with an affluent family, but the differences were RJ grew up with love till his parents died and Bart grew up with little love and was raised by nannies.
Bart can call on spirits if he needs answers about the criminals, he is searching for and he begins researching the foster care system and who grew up with the foster family that was just targeted. He begins to suspect he might know who the guilty party is; he first must discover the Ghost Boy’s real identity. Now rather than arrest Ghost Boy he wants to save him.
While RJ is getting all his information together against the owner of the warehouse who was responsible for his brother’s death, he discovers that a witch with dark magic is now an employee and RJ is in real danger if he is discovered. RJ has visions and his last vision was of him dying and he realizes that all his visions come true, so he feels he is on borrowed time.
RJ knows he must stay away from Bart despite loving him for both his sake and Bart’s. As he did for half of his life, he found himself going to one of the places like Carnival of Mysteries for a sense of safety and support which he is readily given. If you have been reading this series, then you know it is a magical carnival and always seems to be available to those who need them, and RJ needed them.
I love this series and this book I read in a few short hours because I couldn’t put it down. Bart and RJ are amazing characters. Secrets, surprises, romance and sex and lots of magic, something for everyone.
