Review: After Moonrise by P.C. Cast and Gena Showalter

Title: After Midnight

Author: P.C. Cast and Gena Showalter

Published: Harlequin Books November 2012

Synopsis: Join two of the biggest names in paranormal romance on a breathtaking journey to a world where ghosts live on and love never dies…  Possessed by P.C. Cast and Haunted by Gena Showalter

Status: Read from November 10 to 11, 2012 — I own a copy {Courtesy Harlequin Australia}

My Thoughts:

After Moonrise includes two loosely linked short stories by bestselling paranormal romance authors, P.C. Cast and Gena Showalter.

In P.C. Cast’s Possessed, Kent Raef is a Psy investigator whose particular gift allows him to track negative emotions. When Lauren Wilcox approaches Raef to help solve the murder of her twin sister, Aubrey, Raef is puzzled that he can find no trace of the killer until the sisters reveal their unusual plight. Aubrey’s murderer has stolen her soul and while the twins can communicate, each time Aubrey begins to speak of her death she is forcefully ripped back into the veil, taking part of Lauren’s life force with her. To release Aubrey’s tormented spirit and save Lauren, Raef must find the killer, and hope.

Haunted by Gena Showalter is peripherally linked to Possessed when Aurora Harper and Detective Levi Reid seek the help of the After Midnight Agency. On leave from the Oklahoma police force after attacking a serial killer, Levi blames the odd blackouts he is experiencing on stress. Holed up in his new apartment, nursing his anger over his suspension, Levi is not inclined to help his crazy blonde neighbour when she knocks on his door.
Harper is desperate, each morning she wakes to discover she has painted a faceless, gruesome murder scene and she is convinced the image is a repressed memory of a brutal crime. Worried she, or her best friend Lana is at risk of becoming the sadistic killer’s next victim, Harper begs Levi to help her solve the mystery.

While each tale combines romance, raunch, mystery and action both stories have strengths and weaknesses.
I really liked that they were linked by the AM (After Mooonrise) Agency as provides a framework that unites the stories despite their differences.
I thought the plot in Haunted to be stronger, even though I figured out the twist fairly early on (can you guess which whispered line from a popular movie was running through my mind), yet the premise of Possessed had some interesting and original elements.
I preferred the relationship that developed between Levi and Harper to the uncomfortable triangle in Possessed, though Cast deserves credit for creativity. The sex scenes in both tales are heated, balanced precariously between erotica and fade to black.
The characters in each story are well defined given the constraints of the format. The male leads, are the tortured alpha’s common to the genre and the women have core strength despite their weaknesses.

Fans of Cast and Showalter will enjoy this offering as should those who readers who read within the genre, especially if you have a thing for ghost stories. I would not be surprised if further collaborations based around the After Moonrise Agency are already in the works.

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