Finders Keepers Paranormal Gothic Ghost Romance
Independently Published
December 22, 2020
410
Finders Keepers - An Almost Gothic Love Affair
A bride is sent off into the unknown to marry a stranger on All Hallows Eve, October 31, 1749.
What she finds on her arrival is enough to make her skin crawl.
Limping footsteps, blood-curdling screams, smoking torches, and a house on a cliff... A man she only sees in the dark, his breathing labored behind a mask.
“A betrothal is as good as the wedding vows. You cannot leave.”
“Am I your prisoner?”
"You shall stay here until you bear me a child. Then you can stay or go, the choice shall be mine!"
Available at Amazon.
Reviewed by Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
October 31,1749 All Hallows Eve and Lenora Hastings is on her way to marry Henry DuPre. Lenora met her fiancé when she was a child and has no real memory of him but she is eighteen and on her way to be wed. When she arrives during a very dark stormy night there is no one waiting for her, no lights, no servants and no fiancé. A dark fearsome man arrives and leads her into the house taking with him the papers her father sent and saying very little.
Tomorrow is to be her wedding day but there does not seem to be any preparations so alone in her bedroom she wonders what is going on.
In the dark her fiancé Henry, old and deformed comes to her bed telling her that being engaged is as good as being married and he wants what is his now before the nuptials. As a virgin and having lost her mother at a young age she is totally unprepared for what is expected of her but one night in her husband’s arms she knows that she wants more and wants to be his wife in spite of his deformity. The day of her wedding dressed in her wedding gown she discovers that there was a death and her marriage is out of the question. Apparently Alexander’s wife died the night she arrived.
The next day and all the days after she does not see her husband he only comes to her at night and is gone. By morning it is the man she first met Alexander Verhagen who takes charge of caring for her along with the housekeeper Agnes. Strange things happen, eyes seem to be staring at her, hands appear out of nowhere and she begins to see ghosts. Everything going on would definitely make a weaker woman run for the hills but Lenora wants to be married and have children with her husband until she is told that once she has a child she can go or stay it is up to her, the child will of course stay.
Her nights are spent in the arms of her husband, her days are spent with Alexander always one step ahead of her. She is in a very remote area so escape will not be easy but she is determined. Lenora is not the type to just sit back and take orders especially from someone who is not her husband and Alexander learns to be on constant alert where she is concerned.
Agnes is her ally but Matilda who works on Ghost Horse Farm is anything but. When Alexander finally confesses that it is him in her bed at night she just takes that as another one of his lies, he is not old and he is not deformed. When the Thompson family shows up for Halloween she finally has people to talk to especially Toby and Clarissa who she befriends. The house is filled with one mystery after another and Lenora is determined to solve them all no matter where it takes her.
One surprise after another kept me glued to the story, a story that reminded me of the classics I so loved, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, stories filled with secrets and dark brooding men. I loved Lenora and her bravery in the face of everything going on especially when a knock on the door and a stranger on the other side would change everything she thought she knew.
