Wight Mischief by JL Merrow | Cat's Release day Review, Excerpt & #giveaway @Dreamspinners @jlmerrow

A ghost of a chance at love.

Personal trainer Will Golding has been looking forward to a getaway with his best friend, Baz, a journalist researching a book on ghosts. But on the first day of their camping trip on the Isle of Wight, Will takes a walk on a secluded beach and spies a beautiful young man skinny-dipping by moonlight. Ethereally pale, he’s too perfect to be real—or is he?

Lonely author Marcus Devereux is just as entranced by the tall athlete he encounters on the beach, but he’s spent the years since his parents’ violent death building a wall around his heart, and the thought of letting Will scale it is terrifying. Marcus’s albinism gives him his otherworldly appearance and leaves him reluctant to go out in daylight, his reclusiveness encouraged by his guardian—who warns him to stay away from Will and Baz.

The attraction between Will and Marcus can’t be denied—but neither can the danger of the secrets haunting Marcus’s past, as one “accident” after another strikes Will and Baz. If they don’t watch their step, they could end up added to the island’s ghostly population.

Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon US | Amazon UK

Cat gives this one 3 Meows with a 3 Purr heat index...

Will goes on a holiday with his BFF Baz. Will has been in love with Baz forever but Baz just uses will to get off when no big breasted females are around. As much as Baz is an ass I still like him. He did give some comic relief to a tense story and deep down you could tell he did have some affection for Will. 

Will is a sweetheart. Big, muscular, personal trainer with a big heart and near deaf in one ear. How could you not like him? Marcus is an enigma. He has albinism and I felt I learned a lot about the condition from this story. 

There are other characters, Courts a female Baz gets with a lot and Karen her friend. I liked Karen but Courts I felt was made a bit too dumbed down. 

The story is ok though the romance part doesn't really take place until very close to the end of the story.  It is more of a thriller, I can't say mystery as it's pretty predictable.  I did like the descriptions and the telling of the history of Wight mainly the ghost stories through Baz and his research for his book. I loved the scenery and was charmed by the English accents and words.

If you like broken characters, a touch of suspense, ghosts stories and charming scenery you should like this.

Excerpt...

Prologue

MARCUS STOOD for a moment at the foot of the cliff, breathing in warm air rich with salt and seaweed. The full moon highlighted every tiny ripple, every gentle wave in the calm, still sea. A perfect night for a swim. He grinned to himself and hurtled down the beach, pulling off his shirt and flinging it aside. He resisted the urge to kick his flip-flops high into the air—all those pebbles would be hell on bare feet if he never managed to find his shoes again—and was forced to halt for a moment to undo his jeans and let them fall to the sand. Just for the hell of it, he pushed off his trunks as well.
Soft, moist sand scrunched between his toes, like demerara sugar, and Marcus slowed to appreciate the sensation. He walked along the tide line for a few minutes, leaving a barely visible trail of footprints like Robinson Crusoe. It was a bad idea, really, to go swimming when the tide was on its way out, but Marcus had been cooped up all day in a house growing stuffier by the minute. He’d suffocate if he had to wait another six hours for his swim. It’d be getting light by then, in any case. That would ruin everything.
Moonlight leached the color from everything it touched, turning the sand to silver and lending the rocks a chalky, luminous sheen. Marcus smiled in approval and walked slowly into the water. A painful chill assaulted his feet, his ankles, then his knees. He felt alive for the first time that day. What would it be like to be swept out by the waves? He tried to imagine how it must feel to struggle, to tread water, then at last to grow weary and be sucked under by the unforgiving sea. How would it feel to drown? Would it be a hellish nightmare of fighting to breathe, of water invading his lungs? Or would it be a gentle death as the sea enfolded him like a mother’s arms around an overtired child, who fought the pull of sleep but surrendered gladly in the end? He should look that up. He might be able to use it in a novel.
From behind, a harsh, grinding clatter, like a foot sliding on pebbles, shattered the peace of the night. Marcus spun around but couldn’t make out a thing against the dark looming shadows of the cliffs. About to call out, to challenge the intruder—if only to find out if there really was one—Marcus abruptly recalled his nudity and, horrified, flung himself into the sea.
The frigid water hit his chest like an iceberg of Titanic proportions, slamming the air out of his lungs. By the time Marcus had recovered his breath and rubbed the salt from his eyes, it was far too late to detect any signs of movement from the beach.

Hi, I’m JL (Jamie) Merrow. I’m that rare beast; an English person who refuses to drink tea. I’m a writer of (mainly) m/m or f/f romance, mostly contemporary or paranormal, but with a fickle muse that occasionally ambushes me in dark alleyways and drags me off, cackling, to write historical or science fiction. Some might call all this pillar-to-posting tragic evidence of a short attention span; I couldn’t possibly….er, what were we talking about, again? ;)

I'm a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers’ Circle and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find me online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

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