Liquid Silver Books, $5.50, ISBN 978-1-59578-465-0
Paranormal Romance, 2008
Murphy’s Corner and Inn Tavern is haunted. Owner Aidan Campbell doesn’t want to believe that his establishment is haunted, but the co-owner Perry Murphy is convinced that a visit from a ghostbusting team is what the establishment needs. This is where our heroine McKenna Murphy steps in. She’s psychic and she senses the spooky woo-woo stuff. Demon Inn is the story of how these folks deal with the haunted inn as well as how Aidan and McKenna manage to squeeze in some pumpies in the process.
Story-wise, I have no problems with this one. I do have a quibble about the author’s writing style though – it’s really dull. This is a novella, which means that every word counts. Yet the author opens the story by wasting paragraphs after paragraphs explaining Perry’s relationship with McKenna – details that have nothing to do with the storyline at all. The author often puts in a lot of irrelevant details into the story, bogging the narrative down in the process.
Also, the author would bring up McKenna’s woe-is-me story about not fitting in with the rest of the folks in town. I can only wonder why she doesn’t just move out of the town instead of staying put and playing the martyr.
Demon Inn could have been an interesting paranormal romance, but the author’s narrative tends to bog down the flow and disrupt the momentum of the story. As a result, this is a dry and dull story despite its premise.
