Life After My Unfortunate Demise by Edward Kendrick

Title: Life After My Unfortunate Demise
Author: Edward Kendrick
Length: 6,480 words (37 pdf pages)
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Genre: m/m paranormal
Rating: C

Blurb:

Ghost Lesson 101: you can’t move on if there’s unfinished business. So Mark tells newly dead Dixon. They have to find out who murdered them. But apparently there is more to it than that, including their growing feelings for each other.

Review:

While I enjoy this author’s work, I didn’t really connect with this story, perhaps because with ghosts you have to have a fair bit of “convenience” to facilitate the romance, although this has a light breezy tone. Mark, a former PI, has been wandering around the building where he was murdered for the last 30 years with only a ghost cat for company. However the hottie lawyer he’s been watching just got murdered and he soon joins Mark in his wanderings. Out if the blue, the cat starts talking and tells them that they are stuck on earth until they know who killed them. That is quickly revealed, but then it seems the murderers have to be caught to move on. Meanwhile, despite being unable to touch anything or anything touch them, Mark and Dixon can touch each other and they make good use of the skill.

As I said, conveniences like only Mark and Dixon can touch each other, and that suddenly the cat speaks and explains what is going on, seemed rather contrived in order to facilitate a romance between the two men. I was also a bit confused as to the whole basis for the murders which had a connection even 30 years later, but the emphasis is on the efforts to prove the crimes which really reinforces the connection between the two men.

I didn’t feel that I really got to know either man that well, ghost perhaps. 🙂 However people who enjoy stories with ghost protagonists will likely enjoy it and it’s not meant to be taken too seriously. There is a talking cat after all, so I suppose it’s more of the light-hearted sitcom feel with a touch of drama as the killers are revealed.

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Eye of the Beholder by Edward Kendrick

Title: Eye of the Beholder
Author: Edward Kendrick
Length: 19,321 words (104 pages)
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Genre: m/m mystery contemporary
Rating: C+

Blurb:

When Preston is attacked by an unknown assailant, he’s unable to face the future looking as he does. With the help of his new roommate, will he let down his barriers and meet his best friend Cary face to face again?

When porn star Preston is attacked by an unknown assailant who may have been working for his former boss, he goes into seclusion, unable to face the future looking as he now does.

Meanwhile his friend, Cary, and Cary’s boyfriend, give up trying to find Pres and move on with their lives. Then, through his online business, Pres reconnects with his friend, although Cary doesn’t know it is Pres. Will Pres, with the help of the woman with whom he is living, be able to let down his barriers and meet face to face with Cary or will his fears keep them just online friends?

Review:

This format is a bit short for a real mystery, but I do enjoy the author’s style, so enjoyed the story, even though I’d figured out who the bad guy was quite early on. Preston and Cary have been friends for years, and while Preston has been in love with him for some time, Cary shot him down early on fearing ruining their friendship. Preston’s finally finished his contract with sketchy porn studio, and despite threats is happy to be out of it. While Cary is out of town, Preston is attacked in his apartment and badly slashed. His career options go from model to hideous creature (in Preston’s opinion). However before Cary can get back to town, Preston has checked himself out of the hospital and disappeared.

You find out he was taken in by a former friend, now a nurse, and he starts his own web design business allowing him to work without meeting anyone. Of course, by chance, Cary ends up being assigned to work with him on a new company website, and they form a friendship on-line. Finally, Preston admits who he is and they reunite, but within days Preston is shot. Meanwhile it seems Cary’s boyfriend is getting rather paranoid and possessive. Hmmmm.

I really liked Preston’s friend Tabby. She pushed him to get out and be in the world, and she really helped him see that not everyone would view him as horrible. But she wasn’t the interfering friend. Yes, she encouraged both him and Cary to confront their feelings for each other, but I got the impression that if either one had told her to back off, she would have. It wasn’t that eye-rolling interfering female that seems to crop up so often.

As I said, the “mystery” of who attacked Preston was fairly clear, but still, on the whole, I liked Preston and wanted him to find his HEA despite the terrible scarring he had to learn to live with. Those who really want a solid mystery may not enjoy it, but if you like the hurt-comfort theme, combined with friends to lovers, and reunification (wow, lots of tropes covered there), I think you’ll find it a good read to pass the time, if not necessarily one you go back to later.

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Lessons Learned by Edward Kendrick

Title: Lessons Learned (Hitman’s Creed #2)
Author: Edward Kendrick
Length: 12,753 words (65 pdf pages)
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Genre: m/m contemporary
Rating: C+

Blurb:

When a friend of Joey’s disappears, ex-hitman, Glenn, and Joey, his young cop lover, fear the kidnapper may be a hitman sent to kill Glenn. Now they must find their missing friend and stop the killer before he gets to Glenn.

When his former boyfriend disappears, young small-town cop Joey and his ex-hitman lover Glenn set to work to discover what happened to him. In the process they decide Nate has been abducted by a hitman who may be looking for Glenn. Now they must find Nate and stop the hitman before he can succeed in killing Glenn. In the process they must learn to trust in each other’s abilities if Glenn, and their love for each other, is to survive.

Review:

You don’t have to have read the prequel to this story Hitman’s Creed but it helps you to understand the dynamic of the two main characters if you do. Things are going well for former hitman (now working freelance for the government) Glenn and Joey who is now a police officer in his small town. However their romantic interlude is interrupted with news that Joey’s ex, and now friend of the couple, Nate has disappeared. Thanks to Glenn’s expertise, they determine that it looks like Nate may have interrupted an assassin in action. They then begin the hunt. Once he’s found, Glenn decides that he is the target of the assassin and sets out to lure him in.

A big part of the first story was Glenn’s insistence that Joey was two young as he’s 13 years younger than Glenn, and that continues here, although Joey’s mother sets him straight about trying to over-protect Joey. There’s a lot of discussion about Glenn’s past and whether what he did was morally wrong and did that make him a bad person. My biggest issue was if this first guy found Glenn, someone hired him, which means there will be more coming won’t there? Mind you, it ends that night so they don’t really have time to think about it, but I’m thinking it wouldn’t be the end.

I was curious about Nate and I felt a bit bad in the first book when he ended up being tossed aside for Glenn, but I was glad to see he had found a new guy Rory and I would be interested in their story. I always tend to get curious about secondary characters. The emphasis on this story is solving Nate’s disappearance and then determining how to trick the assassin into coming after Glenn so they have the upper hand. If you like that kind of thing, or you liked the couple in the first book it will be a nice follow-up to see them coping with life together. All in all I thought it was a good follow-up to the first story.

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Abstract Realism by Edward Kendrick

Title: Abstract Realism
Author: Edward Kendrick
Length: 16,401 words (82 pdf pages)
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Genre: m/m crime/mystery
Rating: C-

Blurb:

Tonio, an artist, is in seclusion after being viciously attacked by the lover of a casual acquaintance in an act of jealousy which scarred Tonio inside and out.

Tonio’s only contact with the world is his sister Jessie, who implores him to shed his self-imposed exile. When his paintings go on display at a gallery, Jessie convinces Tonio to attend the opening night and a party to be held in his honor.

Jonam, the handsome owner of a close protection service, offers to come to Tonio’s aid when Tonio’s attacker begins to make new threats. The question then becomes, will Jonam be able to keep Tonio safe, and in the process teach him to accept he is not defined by the scars he carries but by who he is inside? Only if he can, will Tonio be able to live, and love, again.

Review:

This is a readable if rather predictable little story, but I had issues with what I consider common sense factors. Tonio was attacked and cut, as it says, by the lover of a guy he’d just met. However despite knowing it was acquaintance’s lover, he doesn’t tell the police, simply because he doesn’t know the guy’s name. He leads them to believe it was a random attack. So rather than give what information he has, he chooses to give nothing. And then you wonder why the police haven’t found the guy?

He runs into a sexy blond in the park, however spurns him, only to have the guy show up at his gallery show. It later comes to light that he runs a security business and when the attacker shows up again, sure that his lover has run off with Tonio, it’s up to Jonam to come up with a plan to capture the guy because he is able to figure out who he is within hours. However does Tonio follow the instructions of two men trained as professional body guards? No. He insists on getting in the middle of it all and ends up nearly getting killed … again. Why don’t people listen to the professionals?

This also smacks of insta-love. Despite only ever having seen Tonio at the park where he jogs and meeting him once, he is sworn to protect him forever. I get insta-lust, and I liked that while he was physically beautiful, he also had scars due to a fire which made him able to relate to Tonio, but it just seemed a bit much given the length of time they’d known each other. There were just too many behaviours which were illogical, and if I were the police I would have been annoyed at Tonio for withholding information.

So if you can overlook the issues I had, it’s not a bad story. Tonio and his paranoia/fear were well done and I think made sense given his experience, but I just was so frustrated with his behaviour that only served to feed his fear. I’ll have to try a different story by this author because I liked the style, just in this particular case not certain plot elements didn’t work for me.

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