Our Chaotic Goose Faranae (otherwise known as our Virtual Manager) presents a review of Jordan L. Hawk’s The Forgotten Dead.
Dr. Nigel Taylor is mostly a typical academic, except his specialty is parapsychology despite refusing to work with anyone claiming to be psychic. Yes, he’s got some hangups. Unfortunately, like all academics, the pursuit of funding dictates his choices and he ends up working with Oscar Fox and his team of amateur ghost hunters. They both have secrets and things they’d rather leave in the past, and now they’ve added their attraction to each other to the list of things they aren’t admitting to anyone.
Unlike most of Hawk’s other books, horror is the main plot here, and the romantic development is just a little neglected. That’s a small flaw in an otherwise great book.
The two genres are diametrically opposed so this wasn’t an easy fusion. How do you convince the reader everyone is in danger when you know you’re getting a happy ending?
Hawk played my imagination like a violin. He gave me just enough hints to imagine the absolute worst I could, and didn’t reveal the truth until it was necessary for achieving the romance side of the equation. I’ve seen the basic premise of this novel a dozen times, and not once was I actually reminded of any of them, even one that also had a trans character working with amateur ghost hunters!
There is going to be at least one sequel, which I hope will expand on the secondary characters. This is not to say these characters were shallow, but rather that I had enough to get a sense of them, but not enough to really think about them wholly apart from the two protagonists. There’s also a great deal more to explore about Oscar and Nigel. We’ve seen them at both their best and their worst, and I’d really like to see them at their every day.