REVIEW: Living With The Dead -Spirit Boys Series Book #2- BL Maxwell

Title: Living With The Dead
Series: Spirit Boys Series Book #2
Author: BL Maxwell
Genre: Horror, Supernatural, Fantasy, LGBTQ Fiction
Publisher: Independent
Release Date: June 6, 2024
Format: Kindle
Pages: 159
Source: Amazon

Jordan Amid’s family has always been connected to the other side of the veil, but they follow a long tradition of secrecy, not telling outsiders all they can do. When an insistent spirit keeps showing up in the middle of the night, he knows he can’t keep it all from Bran any longer. Throwing his spirit from his body is only one of the skills he has, but he’s not sure its time to admit everything yet.

Bran Tanda is finally starting to accept and understand more of his necromancer abilities, but he’s still hesitant to embrace all the powers he knows he possesses, and even though he’s avoided the witches in his mother’s coven his ability is not only one they’re interested in.

Jordan’s family has kept their abilities secret for generations. Mostly to protect themselves from being used in ways that could bring more power to some at the expense of others. Especially when one of those secrets involves the ancient enemy that’s been behind most of the strange happenings around town. Jordan and Bran’s abilities will be tested, along with their relationship. More than their relationship will suffer if they fail.

Review By Ulysses Dietz

Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team

Bran Tanta and Jordan Aman have found love, and that love is the center of this intimate story that merges horror and romance. These two young men work together at the Sacramento morgue, where Bran is the Medical Examiner. The other thing that binds them together is that they are both able to see spirits—and, up until recently, had been in denial about their gift.

In the second book of the series, a troublesome, uneasy ghost named Edith suddenly become of critical importance, as Bran and Jordan begin to honestly look at their own families and learn who Edith is and why she matters.

Meanwhile, a malevolent presence—that only Bran and Jordan can understand, it turns out—is emerging beyond the Veil that separates the world of the living from the world of spirits. For all their reluctance to embrace their spirit-linked reality, Bran and Jordan are the only people equipped to solve the problem before it becomes a potential global crisis. Helped by their local friends, and their ghost friends Justice and Buddy, they have to find a way.

Their special bond to each other is the wild card that nobody on either side of the veil anticipated.

These books, for all their horror-driven plots, are very intimate. The action really focuses on the two heroes and their immediate connections. There is no sense of a big world “out there” in which they are playing their part; they’re more or less on their own, while the world remains oblivious to the dangers lurking on the other side.

Where will they go next?