Haunted on Bourbon Street - Deanna Chase

This book is the first in the Jade Calhoun series (currently 9 books total), a mix of paranormal romance and paranormal cozy mystery. The mystery was the good part, the romance fell flat for me.

 

I found the setting of New Orleans used very little, to the point that you could have set the story in Savannah, Georgia or San Francisco, California and still end up with the same white noise background. The side characters seemed very transitory until the end. I could not stand the constant undercurrent of jealously coming from Jade, Kane, Ian, Pyper, Holly, etc. Someone was always feeling angry or jealous when the object of their affection was paying attention (especially friendly attention) to anyone else on the planet.

 

I did like Jade as a singular character. She has moments of being a naïve Boise transplanted in the Crescent City, but she was never stupid. Jade also understands her talent and the need for self-care, and she ensures she does take that time for self-care. I also liked her friendships with other female characters, despite the jealously. Jade does act like a complete hypocrite when it comes to revealing her talent to Kane, but she is self-aware enough to know she is being a hypocrite.

 

Pyper is bi-sexual and Charlie is a lesbian, but it doesn't define all of those characters. Pyper is more concerned about being a bad ass business woman, and Charlie is young and is eager to take on more responsibility in the business and being mentored by Pyper. Charlie seems a little OTT on the flirting, but she is all business when it comes to friends and the club. I really didn't see a need for Holly to be even mentioned in the story, but since it was a first book in series, I guess all the recurring characters need to be established in this book.

 

Kane is a pretty good character when friends with Pyper and helping her run her business, but his romance with Jade was OTT in horniness and insta-love. I did like that he had his own paranormal talent, so the coupling was more balanced than the typical paranormal person-regular person coupling. Still, it didn't read chemistry; the romance was so forced upon the reader. The constantly shifting love triangle between Kane-Jade-Ian was annoying and took up too much space in the book that could be devoted to the mystery.

 

2 stars and I don't think I will continue with the series.