Blood and Mistletoe (Ivy Granger, Psychic Detective)

by E J Stevens

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

This is a cute short story that is set during Christmas, but isn’t really a Christmas story. Yes, it takes place during the holidays. Yes, there are gifts exchanged. That is pretty much where the holidays end.

Our demon lawyer friend (that sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it, it kinda is), Forneus returns with another case for Ivy and Jinx. Something is killing fae. The only thing that is in common, is that the victims are fae. Ivy needs to figure out who and why these deaths are happening. Ivy takes on the case as she doesn’t want people killing a bunch of fae in her town.

This is a short story, at a little over two hours, but it is a full story. We get to spend some time with some of my favorite characters in Kaye the witch, Marvin the teenage bridge troll and Hob the Brownie. There is even some appearances by Ceff, the Kelpie king and Ivy’s boyfriend. It was a great listen to fit in between some of my other listens. I do think you can go on to book two if you aren’t a fan of novellas, but this is a fun read that adds some depth to the secondary characters.

Narration
Blood and Mistletoe is the first book that I’ve listened to with different narrators the way this one was done. I have listened to different narrators that changed with chapters, but this one changed with sentences. That was a little jarring to me. The narrators were great, but everytime a male characters spoke, we went from a female to a male narrating. This was completely new to me and I don’t think it is something I would search out for. I did eventually get used to it, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a fan. I would be willing to listen to either narrator if they read the entire book. I would also mention that I like the narrator who does the full length books better for this series. This is a case of just not my style of narration.

I like to thanks E.J. Stevens for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.