Previous Owners Ghost Story
Independently Published
November 21, 2020
211
Helene Curtis has two specialties. She is an expert at selling Real Estate, and she can talk to dead people. Some previous owners never leave.
The problem with many houses is not the smelly old shag carpeting. Sometimes it’s a haunting. Helene finds these spiritual fixer uppers and dispels creepy critters or convinces ghosts to move on. It has made her one of the most successful agents in her county. Yet with all this success, she yearns for the one thing she has never had. Love and a family.
Helene moves to the big city with her best friend, Frank. Shortly after she arrives, Helene discovers two very important things. Helene meets Brandon and learns that love at first sight really does exist. And the second is that some houses have more than just ghosts.
Some houses have monsters that will eat your soul.
Helene and Frank work with a local coven to figure out who is opening up portals and inviting malevolent creatures into newly bought houses. It’s a real estate scheme Helene has never seen, and it turns deadly when it attracts a killer ghoul.
Now Helene must put her heart on the line and learn to love and trust Brandon. All while struggling to figure out who is casting spells that will release an unspeakable evil upon the city, and maybe even the world.
Reviewed by Madison Davis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
I had a great time starting to read ‘Previous Owners.’ Helene Curtis is a real estate agent who talks to ghosts and is excellent at her job. Due to her ‘minor’ magical abilities, she can speak to the previous dead house owners and convince them to move on, so their formerly haunted house was ready to be sold.
Helene has a best friend, Frank. He’s been with her for years. She also has a boyfriend and a job she likes, and then her life takes a turn for the worst.
But, of course, in this book, the worst isn’t so bad.
And there, I’m afraid, the charm of the book starts becoming sketchy. Helene Curtis is still relatively young and lives in a small town. But when she decides to create a new life, she immediately has the money to buy her own place in the city, get a job with a company which wanted to have her for a long time already, and she’s successful right away – and, of course, finds a handsome boyfriend too.
While Helene in her small town was described as ‘plain,’ later in the book, she suddenly turns into a beauty. Was she ‘modestly’ talented in magic initially, later on, she turned out to be very powerful. And, of course, Helene immediately finds magical support when needed. The coven she connects with is very powerful and communes with the dead all the time.
The intimate scenes in the book are quite rough, even though the author wrote about ‘true love.’ Still, the physical scenes between the ‘lovers’ seem to be straight out of porn. Despite the exact words within the sexual act, I got the feeling the descriptions were a bit helpless like they came out of ‘other books.’
The evil party in the story connected to the dark side, a ‘ghoul,’ in the most disgusting way, which was a real turn-off to me.
Frank plays a significant role in the book, which made him my favorite character. But even he stayed somehow colorless during the entire story. His development at the end of the book is surprising, but unfortunately, medically impossible.