Sloane McClain, $0.99, ISBN 979-8201617998
Fantasy Romance, 2021

In Sloane McClain’s A Hunter for a Stormy Night, I’m clearly the guest that doesn’t know anyone in a party full of people already acquainted with one another.

Let’s see, this is part of a series called Sidhe Hunters, and it’s full of folks called Daondasidhe. If that was a mouthful, we can also call then Halflings. No, these are not hobbits in all but name, but rather, half-human and half-fairy folks no doubt conceived during some weird otherworldly orgy. Meanwhile, normal boring humans are called Pures, maybe because they are not conceived by degenerate humans and little things with wings. 

In this story, heroine Auria Rainer moves into her family that is said to be cursed or haunted, what with all previous tenants having fled the place like it was the Amityville Horror or something. 

At the same time, her ex Luke Havelock—that’s a L, okay, not any other alphabet—shows up after her mother asked him to come check up on her. He’s also a Sidhe Hunter, although here he’s tad out of his element and Auria is the expert on haunted house woo-woo here. That’s a nice change of dynamic from the usual urban fantasy, and I like that because it keeps things from being generic.

Weirdly enough, I am enjoying this story until the mystery is sort of resolved and the ghost shows up. This ghost is a cackling, crazy character that turns this story from a pretty entertaining urban fantasy tale into a cartoon show and I find myself preferring the cooler vibes of the early parts of this story. That ghost doesn’t show up until later in the story, but it sure makes this later part feels like a hundred pages of tiresome cartoon villain antics. 

So, the characters are alright, the conversations are fine without coming off as too forced or two much into bathos, and really, I’m having fun until the author decides to take a swerve and drive the story into cackling Cruella county.