Bad Blood

I received a copy of Bad Blood by Robyn Bachar from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was the first novel by Robyn Bachar that I have read and even though I'm always a little leery jumping into an ongoing series in case the novels build on each other rather than share the same space and marginally overlap, it was not terribly difficult to pick up the world of Bad Blood (I haven't read the rest of this series, but I believe this set of characters didn't have a back story before Bad Blood).

The good: I found the novel to be well written and the dialogue between the characters (primary characters as well as secondary) was entertaining and enjoyable. The chemistry between the main characters - Natividad and Cris - was a little too insta-lust for me, but it was steamy and worked in the context of the story.

The bad: my main critique was that the end of the story felt very rushed. Rather than fully explore and overcome the conflict, it was resolved in a really smooched together ending. So I'd give it 3.75 stars in all.

Overall, Bad Blood by Robyn Bachar was a decent book to curl up and worth a read.

As the location scout for the ghost hunting show Spirit Seekers, Natividad Houlihan is a skeptic and interested more in the history and beauty of the locations. In Spain, she finds a double whammy: one of her ancestors had been murdered on her wedding day, and the estate is still standing and in the possession of a distant relative. There are tales of the estate, so her team convinces her to be the investigator into its location. She'll be there alone for two except for Cris, the caretaker for the property that is only there during the day. As much as Nati doesn't believe in magic or ghosts, odd things happen that make her start to believe.

While this is book five of the Bad Witch series, it is completely independent of the other novels. (Which is good, because I only got the first one prior to reading this!) The characters mentioned at the very end are probably in other books, and the types of magical beings mentioned are in keeping with the rest of the world building in the series.

Nati is a fun character to read about, and I love her interest in history and genealogy, as well as her desire to someday earn her Ph.D. The official summary for the novel reveals that Cris is the reason for her erotic dreams at night, but that's not actually made clear in the novel until about two-thirds of the way through it. Of course, the two of them get along like a house on fire, with an instant sexual attraction and a tendency toward very physical sex. It doesn't feel contrived, though. Nati does have her fantasies before actually talking to him about his ties to the estate, learning about gardening and the other duties to keep it running. They have an easy camaraderie that translates to the fling that they start.

The Big Bad, so to speak, is introduced in the final third of the novel, after the creepy ghostly figures and spooky goings on overnight occur and freak out Nati. Being in the center of something like that is bound to make anyone afraid, and she deals with it realistically and fairly well. That these go on around her is ultimately explained as distant magical heritage, which is why this is part of the Bad Witch series. I would've liked some hint of the magical mentioned as happening in her life earlier, and she could have simply explained it away as part of her skepticism. Instead, it feels out of the blue and a way to tie what could have been a stand-alone paranormal romance into the larger series.