In all honesty, this is probably more of a 3.5, but I am a romance reader who absolutely needs her HEA, and Jade Church delivers that in spades. That's not always a given when a story's romantic leads are a living woman and a dead man, and since the back copy billed this as a story with a happy ending, I wasn't quite sure how Church would pull it off. Did it mean I had to suspend my disbelief? Absolutely, but I'd argue that that's true of all romance novels, not just the paranormal ones, making that a very low barrier to enjoyment.

Slightly more of an issue was heroine Georgina. She skirts perilously close to being TSTL, making poor choices over and over again, even when (especially when) she is repeatedly warned against them. While I sympathize with her needing to know more than she's being given, the alacrity with which she goes haring off after knowing it's dangerous makes me question how she got to be twenty-odd years old in today's world without ever once encountering a horror trope. English major? Avid horror reader? Sorry, I had an easier time buying into the ghost story.

Fortunately for Georgina, this is compulsively readable, even when she's being a twit. It moves at a good pace without feeling rushed and the lore is interesting, if not always sound. The atmosphere is also very well done, and if I wanted a bit more history, that's probably down to personal preference. All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was a lovely break from reality when I very much needed one and a sound choice for a Halloween read.

This is truly the perfect read for spooky szn. I felt this eerie feeling hanging over me while I was reading it. I actually cried my eyes out cause this book was so tragic. I went in blindly so I wasn’t aware it was a HEA. I’m glad it was cause my heart was SO HEAVY. 😭.

Other than the main character, Georgina, being kinda insufferable for the first half of the book, I would’ve given 5 stars. Every time she was told not to do something, she would go right ahead and do it. She moved into the Alswell manor without even truly questioning who the older woman and man her age were, and ASSUMED they were housekeeping and maintenance LOL. Like oh, there’s so many footstep sounds at 2 am- let’s go check it out. She was a walking red flag 🚩. But she honestly got better and I felt that her character development was on point. 100% I loved her and her backstory. The plot got really intense. I don’t even want to tell you, just run to read it!

👻Murder mystery
💀Sexy ghost
🖤Spicy
🤍Haunted manor

Pick this up if you need a a fast paced read, HOT tension with a ghost, and a devastating mystery that will make you feel on edge! 🖤

Thanks to NetGalley and Jade Church for an eARC for this review 🥹🫶🏻

*****TW: Death of a parent, murder, attempt murder*****

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
One Last Touch releases October 13, 2023

Georgina has just recently lost her mother, and now holds ownership of the Alswell Manor as part of her inheritance, which just so happens to be the location where her mother died.

This is eerie, mysterious, and full of secrets and ghosts.

I enjoyed this short seasonal read for what it was, but the logistics surrounding the transference of souls/energy and being alive/dead made no sense.

cw: mentions of grief, death, murder, suicide

The author states that this book is like Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor (both excellent miniseries by Mike Flanagan) but with happy endings. I will watch anything Mike Flanagan makes because of his ability to create incredible characters and amazing plots. Neither can be found in this novella. It was so bad that to call it fan-fiction is to insult the many fan-fic writers that can craft beautifully layered stories.
Georgina has just inherited a creepy mansion from her recently deceased mother Natalia, who had more than one secret up her sleeve. She meets the staff, housekeeper Angie and gardener Sage, to whom she is a complete bitch as soon as she meets him, even though he warns her about the belladonna bushes (and nothing else). Immediately it's clear there are supernatural happenings in the house, and neither Angie nor Sage will tell her what's going on, but Sage does have a habit of appearing in Georgina's room unannounced. Eventually we find out that Natalia's husband had an evil twin who pulled a switcharoo on her so she never knew who really fathered Georgina, and all the ghosts are still around.
It's clear from the beginning that Angie and Sage are ghosts, too, there is no subtlety or nuance here,
Georgina listens to no one and is constantly rescued by Sage. Allegedly, the more the ghosts interact physically the more of their soul is "used up" and they will eventually fade away, but this is a very elastic concept, and Sage is as strong or as weak as the plot requires. He can get hard enough to masturbate along with Georgina, but he doesn't need to clean up afterwards. Mm-kay.
The belladonna bushes come in to play at the end, and mom and maybe-dad save the day by giving Sage all their remaining energy so that he can become alive again and spend his new life with Georgina.
This was bad - the writing was bad, the characters were bad, the ghost powers were poorly defined. I, too, wished that both Haunting miniseries had had happy endings, but this One Last Touch is neither the solution nor a good story on its own.