City Owl Press
Release Date: June 15, 2021
Rating: 📚📚📚📚
Synopsis: When Johnathan Newman arrives in Cress Haven, the last thing he expects is for his life to be irrevocably changed. Sent by a clandestine league of vampire hunters to investigate a string of murders, signs point to a vampire lurking amid the townsfolk. Johnathan’s attempt to enlist the locals leads him to an unlikely partnership with Vic, the town's most eligible, enigmatic bachelor.
As the pair work to solve the mystery, Vic’s secrets come back to bite him. Revealed, the vampire fights his attraction to a man trained to destroy him, while Johnathan’s emotions land him in the middle of forbidden desires. Even if Vic isn’t the murderer, how can Johnathan yearn for his natural enemy?
As Vic leads Johnathan into encounters with terrifying beings straight from children’s nightmares, Johnathan learns that not only is the world stranger than he knew, but that those he once trusted have far darker intentions that will place hunter and vampire at the center of a conflict between realms.
Cress Haven holds more sinister secrets than its resident vampire, a secret so great, it could unleash Hell itself.
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A Bargain of Blood and Gold introduces readers to a world where the supernatural is just out of sight, and the Society has taken on the job of protecting humanity from things that go bump in the night. For Jonathan Newman's graduation exercise into the Society he is left at Cress Haven to handle a series of reported vampire attacks in the small Maine village. But the mauled body of a young woman on his first night there proves to Jonathan that whatever is haunting Cress Haven, it is far more than a mere vampire. Johnathan teams up with slick country gentleman Vic and fiery parson's daughter Alyse to discover what is attacking the girls and learns that what he thinks he knows about the supernatural is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a hard book to review without giving away too many spoilers, which I'll try not to do. Bargain is a fast-paced book full of danger and the reader is right there with Johnathan trying to figure out what is happening. His attraction to Vic becomes even more disturbing to him when he realizes Vic is a vampire and brings up a lot of dark memories of his tragic past. Jacques handles the romance well, with light touches and teasing/flirting as Vic and Jonathan figure out how they should handle the whole "natural enemies" thing. Also the whole "possibly we're all going to die" thing, because while trying to understand what is happening in Cress Haven they are in non-stop danger, getting attacked from strange creatures, or healing from said danger and attacks pretty much constantly. They can be forgiven for occasionally putting the slow-burn romance on hold to see if they can survive the situation. I liked how, even before Jonathan was really sure what he thought of Vic or Alyse, he knew he could trust them and they developed into a pretty good team.
Alyse is definitely not your typical country parson's daughter. She has no qualms about ignoring convention, matter-of-factly solving the supernatural mystery in her home town, and joining in the fight when she has to. She knows what Vic is and loves him for who he is. She refuses to stay at home and be 'safe' while the men go out to battle. Whether it is the possibility of vampires, fairies (the Patricia Briggs kind, not the Disney kind), vampires, or humans, Alyse accepts the evil as well as the good and keeps the men in line. Jonathan takes a little warming up to, but his unbelievable stubbornness and sheer dumb luck grew on me, as did his mental flexibility when ignoring the Society's idea of 'right' and 'wrong' long before he learns to seriously question their actions. Bargain is full of excellent light sarcasm and humor-and Vic gets all the best lines. Questions about Vic and his past still linger by the end, but it becomes obvious in the last few pages we will have more adventures of Vic, Jonathan, and Alyse to look forward to in the future. The only real question by the end for me was, how will Kristin Jacques top this in her next book?
I received a free copy of this book from BookSirens in exchange for an honest review
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