Ghost Hunter by Jayne Castle

When Elly found out that Boone Cooper was only engaged to her because it was good for the Guild (of which he is the Aurora Springs boss), she broke off their engagement and fled her small town for the big city. When she calls him, he's quietly sure that she's ready to come back to him. It comes as a big shock when she asks for help finding a lost friend. It's even more shocking that finding her friend pulls them into a drug ring conspiracy and hunting down a man determined to kill Boone.
Decent story in the Harmony series though not one of my faves.

Ghost Hunters #3

Three stars

This book came out May 28, 2006

Follows After Glow

Followed by Silver Master

Hard copy of mine

Opinions are my own

After Glow by Jayne Castle

Lydia Smith is having issues. Her love life is a little uncertain (she loves Emmett but isn't sure of his feelings), her job isn't her favorite (but Shrimpton's House of Horrors is beginning to grow on her), and now she's found another body. This time it looks like an overdose. But why did Professor Maltby call her? And what the heck is going on with Emmett?

Ghost Hunters #2

Four stars

This book came out February 24, 2004

Follows After Dark

Followed by Ghost Hunter

Hard copy of mine

Opinions are my own

After Dark by Jayne Castle

Lydia Smith experienced a "Lost Weekend" wherein two of the Hunters she was underground with claim she went rogue and ran away. She can't dispute the claim since she can't remember exactly what happened. But she's too cautious to have ever done something as stupid as run away from the men who were supposed to be protecting her. After the incident, she lost her university job and is now working at Shrimpton's museum of horrors. And she's just discovered a body. One that's not supposed to be there. The body of a man who was a ruin rat and sort of a friend. Whatever will the first client of her fledgling antiques-finding business think?

Emmett London is hard to disconcert. After all, he was the Guild Boss of a neighboring city and managed to completely overhaul that group's reputation into being something less than hired thugs and more like any other large business. Of course he hasn't told Lydia that he's a hunter. He's read her file and knows that she blames hunters in general for her lost weekend. Emmett just wants help finding an curio cabinet his family brought from Earth when they came through the Curtain and he thinks she might know some of the... less savory places to look.

Despite their total differences, Lydia and Emmett manage to not only find the curio cabinet, but in the process they take down a group working illegally in the tunnels, and rescue Emmett's nephew as well.

Ghost Hunters #1

Four stars

This book came out January 1, 2000

Followed by After Glow

Hard copy of mine

Opinions are my own

Sweetwater and the Witch by Jayne Castle

When the book begins, Ravenna Chastain is a profiler for the FBPI (Federal Bureau of Psi Investigation). She's not really supposed to be in the field but she volunteered to pose as a witch. Well, as the type of woman a specific cult is targeting as witches. But the FBPI isn't exactly knocking down the door of the cultists to rescue her. It's a good thing she has her fire talent and a dust bunny she names Harriet who ends up being an inveterate pen collector. It's that night that causes her to pivot into matchmaking. It's there that she meets Ethan Sweetwater. He has, of course, lied on his application making it hard for Ravenna to find him a match. But, they both have events coming up that would be nice to have someone else at. So they agree to go as each others dates.

This is a plot point that Castle has used a lot in this series. And this book feels like a mishmash of a number of other books she's written (which, at this point, is probably really hard not to do.) The whole time I was reading this book though, I was thinking of Filomena from "The Main Attraction"; she is basically the same character as Ravenna. Small, red haired, volatile (the scene with Ravenna's family felt like a major Krentz throwback; heroine embarrasses herself by being too emotional while the hero is uber calm and makes the family love him even more than the actual family member.) Overall, the book was fine but it felt like a lot of retread to the 90s with shallow characters and a plot that was not as tightly woven or fleshed out as more recent books. 

Three and a half stars

This book come out September 20, 2022

Follows Guild Boss

Followed by People in Glass Houses

ARC kindly provided by Berkley Publishing Group

Opinions are my own

Zinnia by Jayne Castle

Zinnia Spring's life hasn't been going real great lately. Her parents died, her family is pressuring her academic brother into being CEO of the family corporation, and then a wealthy husband and wife set her up as his mistress to cover up their menage a trois resulting in Zinnia being branded the "Scarlet Lady." And now, trying to track down a matrix talent she's held the focus for (her prism is well suited for matrix talents), she encounters a psychic vampire.

Nick Chastain is a powerful matrix talent but not a psychic vampire. Even if. He did sort of "jump" Zinnia's prism on the psychic plane. Luckily, she works past it (pretty fast, actually) and is able to work with him not only to figure out what happened to her original matrix, but to discover what happened to his father... a decades old murder. 

Better than the first book in the series, Castle starts to find her rhythm in her new world.

Three stars

This book came out May 1, 1998

Follows Amaryllis

Followed by Orchid

Audiobook from Audible

Opinions are my own

Orchid by Jayne Castle

Rafe Stonebraker is a strat-talent. He should have been the one to take over his grandfather's corporation but he got out when he was young, knowing that he could not work for his grandfather. But now that his grandfather is about to retire, the only person in line to be CEO is his vengeful cousin who wants to take the company down. Rafe is ready to step back into the picture but the board is fairly conservative and, in a society that prizes marriage, he's going to need at least a fiancée for the board to consider him. Since his marriage counselor seems hesitant, Rafe decides to find a bride himself by hiring out local prism agencies to help him in his work as a private investigator.

Orchid Adams is a romance writer by day and a prism for hire by night. She is a special kind of prism, a rare ice prism. There are few in existence and, awhile ago, three were used by a local lab to see if their particular prisms could help focus for crazy people and maybe make them sane again. That didn't work. But now Orchid's old life is crossing over with Rafe's current investigation.

I like Zinnia and Nick's romance a little bit better but this story is the best in the trilogy.

Three stars

This book came out May 1, 1998

Follows Zinnia

Audiobook from Audible

Opinions are my own

Guild Boss by Jayne Castle

The Vortex saga continues... on another planet in the future. This time, the Jones family is brought in through Gabriel. He's a special sort of Hunter, one who is after a specific person in the book's beginning, Lucy Bell. It seems like she wandered away drunk from a wedding and got lost in the underground tunnels. Her family has put out a big bounty for her and Gabriel is the one to notice that there is a dust bunny showing up to get a free pizza every night. He follows the bunny, Otto, and finds the girl.

BUT, that is just the beginning of the story. Lucy objects to the fact that everyone blames her; in fact, she was drugged. But that's not what makes a good story and she loses her clientele. And she blames Gabriel for that fact because... he left? I guess fiction doesn't have to make sense but this seemed odd for a character who otherwise was fairly level-headed.

Gabriel does come back though. He needs someone with Lucy's particular set of talents and he knows what she can do underground. Plus, he just wants to see her again.

There is a lot going on in this story which, even though it's number 14 in a series, seems to be setting up some new storylines. With all of Krentz's books lately, the endings seem to go on and on as in, you think this is the end of the book but then there's another chapter. And another. I also wish we had seen more interactions with Lucy's family. However, Gabriel and Lucy were both great characters and I liked seeing how their relationship went from rescuer/rescued to equal partners. 

Three and a half stars

This book comes out November 16th, 2021

Follows Illusion Town

Followed by Sweetwater and the Witch

ARC kindly provided by Berkley and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

The Hot Zone by Jayne Castle

When the book opens, Sedona Snow is being rescued by a dust bunny from a hidden underground lair. While pushing past the armed guards, Sedona discovers she has a new talent and a new pet (now named Lyle). Thank goodness since when she gets out, she finds that she's been gone for six weeks. And her MC husband has moved on. Rumors abound and that she is unable to find work until moving out to Rainshadow island. I loved that previous characters weren't shoehorned into the story. Sedona and Cyrus were able to find their own way. 

For his part, Cyrus is the Guild boss of the newly formed Rainshadow Guild. He's something of an unknown quantity. He's part of the powerful Jones family and, of course, has an off-the-charts, unusual talent. And he falls into insta-lust with our heroine. 

This book moved so past and had so many parts, I feel like I should have been irritated. But most of Castle's books move like that that it wasn't completely unexpected. It was part of the formula, even the "bad guy" was easily identifiable and probably will be for other regular Castle readers. And to be honest, I wouldn't read this book out of order in the series.

Three and a half stars

This book came out August 26th, 2014

Follows Deception Cove

Followed by Siren's Call

Borrowed as audiobook from Libby

Opinions are my own