Samhain Publishing, $5.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-261-9
Paranormal Romance, 2008
A strange and disturbing tarot session is the least of our heroine Carey Magennis’s worries when she and her fiancé Kyle visit a charming idyllic corner of Ireland for some R&R. A near-death experience (drowning) spices up her holiday and when she comes to consciousness in a hospital, she realizes that she may be starring in her own personal episode of Heroes: she has gained some strange powers that she has little understanding of. For example, she can see a person that no one else can apparently see. He’s cute… but who is he and what does he want from her?
Actually, she has kind of “stolen” the powers from this person, Troy Brannon, who is a ghost who couldn’t stop himself from materializing and saving Carey when she nearly drowned in the sea. Due to the physical contact between him and her, he later learns that he has lost his ability to travel through time to her.
A Ghost of a Chance is a very interesting story. It is not entirely predictable, to say the least. Well written and always gripping, this one has me turning the pages eagerly just to see where Ms Ivey will take me next. Troy is a next balance of take-charge and gentlemanly attitudes, making him a pretty good hero. When she’s not being forced into a being a contrivance, Carey has her moments too.
The problem I have with this story is Carey’s fiancé, who turns out to be a typical deranged whackjob villain. Oh, I’m not spoiling the story here, you will know that Kyle is not a nice guy just by reading the synopsis of the story in the publisher website. But Kyle is so much of a cartoon villain that I end up questioning Carey’s intelligence because she is so blind to his ridiculously over the top Snidely Whiplash antics for so long.
A Ghost of a Chance is one book where the story is both interesting and frustratingly contrived, mainly because the heroine’s contrived inability to realize the true nature of the man she is engaged to plays a big part of the conflict that drives the story. The characters are otherwise fine, the story is gripping and has a few good twists along the way, and I’ve had a good time reading this one.
