Playing with Fire
R. J. Blain
Urban Fantasy/Humor
Warning: This novel contains excessive humor, action, excitement, adventure, magic, romance, and bodies. Proceed with caution.
What do you get when you mix gorgons, an incubus, and the Calamity Queen? Trouble, and lots of it.
Working as the only human barista at a coffee shop catering to the magical is a tough gig on a good day. Bailey Gardener has few options. She can either keep spiking drinks with pixie dust to keep the locals happy, or spend the rest of her life cleaning up the world’s nastiest magical substances.
Unfortunately for her, Faery Fortunes is located in the heart of Manhattan Island, not far from where Police Chief Samuel Quinn works. If she’d been smart, she never would have agreed to help the man find his wife.
Bailey found her, all right—in the absolutely worst way possible.
Uncaged Review: This is a really fun book. I enjoyed the humor, and the characters – it did get a little messy keeping up with everything and Quinn’s “family tree,” but it was a seriously different type of urban fantasy than I’ve ever read before. Sometimes the wise cracking heroine of the story, was “too much,” and it could have been dialed back a bit. But the book kept a good pace and even though some of it was absolutely ridiculous, this strange, whacked out world works. The romance is fun, but a bit too fast paced, there wasn’t a whole lot to it. Bailey is working as a barista, in a coffee shop that sells pixie dust, and is immune to most supernatural, and there are a lot of them in this book. Quinn, is the police Chief, and they seem to always rub each other the wrong way, or so you think. Bailey is often called in by the CDC to clean up after supernatural problems. When gorgon dust is being spread, Bailey is the only one that can deal with, but at what cost?
Fun, interesting characters even though the amount of supernaturals in this book will have you keeping a spreadsheet to keep them straight, but with a fast pace, and some witty dialog, it’s a fun read. Reviewed by Cyrene
4 Stars
