Author: Suneeti Rekhari
Publisher: Escape Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!
There is a tiny prologue which I skipped as I do all prologues. If the author doesn’t think it worth putting into chapter one or later, I don’t think it’s worth reading. This is also a first person PoV novel which I normally detest because it’s all "Me!" all the time which is irritating at best. Some authors can make it work, but for most authors, it’s best avoided like the plague. This author makes it work. The story is short - only a hundred-fifty pages or so - divided into forty chapters, yet! The text is pretty densely packed, but it's a fast read.
What drew me to this novel was that the author was not another in a long line of US authors who think the US is the only place worth writing about! She's not US at all, but is of Indian descent and is resident in Melbourne, Australia. The main character, Shalini Gupta, is of Indian descent and is resident in Melbourne, Australia.... The novel flits very briefly from India to Dubai, and then on to Melbourne where Shalini now lives, attending college, while her uncle (not really - he adopted her and told her he was her uncle) remains in Dubai; then he goes missing!
My attraction to the novel in this case didn’t fail me. I loved the simple, matter-of-fact way it was written, and the perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek acceptance of the paranormal by Shalini and her two friends Neha and Megan. Not only has Shalini inherited some money from her uncle, she has also inherited a mysterious empty warehouse which actually isn't far from her apartment. The warehouse is old and run-down, but she feels compelled to clean it up. The only thing in there is a weird clock which is immovably attached to one of the walls. And the time is wrong.
As she's trying to figure out what to do with the place, a newspaper begins mysteriously appearing in he building each Saturday. Shalini quickly realizes that this is a supernatural newspaper, and she posts an ad in it advertising the warehouse as a dating agency for supernatural beings! Her first client soon shows up: Victor the cranky vampire. This part was hilarious. In fact the whole Victor thing is really amusing. Get this, for example (and keep in mind that Victor's a vampire):
'Bloody hell, Victor, you scared me! It’s daytime! How are you here?'
'I drove.'
I laughed out loud at that. Note the single quotes which Brit and Aussie novels tend to sport to demarcate speech. They look weird to me, and I grew up in Britain! Anyway, no more spoilers. Shalini takes on three cases, and gets deeper into the supernatural than ever she feels safe doing, but she meets some startling and interesting people along the way.
Be warned that this has a cliffhanger ending - it's obviously the start of a series, and I'm typically not a fan of series, but I'm not averse to reading more of this one!
