Review: A Wild Ghost Chase by Elle Adams

A Wild Ghost Chase (Reaper Witch #1)
by Elle Adams
narrated by Sarah Kempton

My Rating: 3 stars

Genre: Cozy Paranormal Mystery
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: MF

Blurb:
Welcome to Hawkwood Hollow, where the dead outnumber the living.

Maura left her paranormal life behind years ago. Her ghost-hunting gift has given her nothing but trouble, and she’s decided she’s better off living outside of the magical world with her trusty sidekick, Mart.

But after she gets fired from her job at the morgue — turns out the living don’t generally appreciate it when the dead try to micromanage their own funerals — she receives a message from a teen blogger in need of her assistance in getting rid of a troublesome spirit. Broke enough to give ghost-hunting one last shot, she decides to take on the case.

The slight problem? Hawkwood Hollow contains more ghosts than living people, and they know something isn’t quite right about their visitor. Determined to leave as soon as the ghost is dealt with, Maura lands herself in hot water when she clashes with a local paranormal detective and finds herself suspecting the trouble-making spirit was murdered.

Maura’s not one to give up without a fight, but it’ll take all her skills to outwit the detective and send the ghost packing — preferably without anyone realising the source of her unique skills.

She’ll show them a ghost-hunting witch like her might be just what Hawkwood Hollow needs.

My Review

I’ve read a few books by Emma Adams and when I saw she wrote cozies under a pen name I was curious to try one of them out. This series was the one that seemed most interesting to me, so I grabbed the box set of the first 3 books in audio.

A Wild Ghost Chase is the first book in the Reaper Witch series and I liked the spooky vibe it had, without becoming too creepy of scary. It doesn’t read like a typical paranormal cozy mystery, but I thought that worked here and made it feel fresh. It does have that first book vibe with everything getting established and it took me some time to get a feel for everything. While it’s not a long book, I did felt a bit slow in parts, but it still kept my attention.

I liked how much the actual ghosts and talking with them is part of the mystery. Mora also uses her witchy powers at times and there are also mentions of other supernaturals. The mystery felt a bit slow to progress at times with not as much progress happening in some parts. I liked some of the reveals and twists later in the book when the mystery moves forward. The conclusion was well done and wrapped things up well both for the mystery and what’s next for Mora.

I liked reading about Mora, there’s a bit about her past and who she is, but I hope to get a better understanding of her in the next book. I liked her determination to resolve the ghost issue and how she handled things. I thought it was interesting how she’s half reaper and half witch. And both her reaper and witch powers are part of the story. I liked her friendship with Carey and how they interact. As well as seeing how she interacts with her twin Mart who is a ghost, although he mostly seems to function as comic relief so far, I hope there’s more of him in the next book.

The narrator for this book worked well for me. I liked the different voices she did and her style seemed to fit the book well. I enjoyed listening to this book and I already have the next 2 books in audio too, so I’ll be listening to those as well. The only thing that didn’t work for me was how she did the voices if someone was screaming as the individual characters voice seemed to get lost and it just sounded odd. It just was jarring to me every time someone screamed. I did appreciate how she didn’t actually change her volume of her voice, so there are no unexpected loud or low sounds, her volume was very consistent throughout.

To summarize: A Wild Ghost Chase is the first book in this cozy paranormal mystery series that follows Mora who is half reaper and half witch. This book has a nice spooky feel with focus on ghost hunting and talking to ghosts without being too scary or creepy. It did have that first book feel where the world and characters need to get established. The story and mystery felt a bit slow to progress at times, but the ending was quite interesting and had some nice twists and reveals and the plot got wrapped up well. I liked Mora well enough as main character and I liked how she was determined to resolve the ghost issue before leaving town, I look forward to learning more about her in future books. The narrator worked well for this book and I enjoyed listening to this book.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– Audible
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.