Reviewer: Tracy Rock n Soul by Lauren Sattersby
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Publication Date: January 16, 2016
Genres: M/M
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
I’m Tyler Lindsey, and until recently, I had an okay apartment, an okay girlfriend, and an okay job as a bellboy at a respectable Boston hotel. Then rock star Chris Raiden died right before I brought his room service—stiffing me on the tip, by the way—and my life went to hell. My fifteen minutes of fame was more like five seconds, and my girlfriend left me in disgust.
But even worse—Chris is haunting me. Not the room where he died, like a normal ghost. No, somehow he’s stuck to me and is insisting on taking care of a bunch of unfinished business in California. So now I have to traipse across the country with the world’s most narcissistic ghost.
But . . . I keep having these weird thoughts. Thoughts about how much I like the way he makes me laugh. Thoughts where I kind of want to kiss the emo-narcissist, even though he’s a ghost and an asshole and I can’t touch him anyway. And even if I could, what will happen when he finishes his business and nothing’s keeping him here anymore?
Tyler works at a hotel as a bellboy and isn’t thrilled with his job. He hates the things he has to do for his customers and the fact that people tip so badly. When the book opens he’s out in the middle of the night trying to find red seedless grapes for a rock star that was staying at the hotel he works at. He’s not happy about it but he does it because it’s his job. They certainly don’t want to disappoint the guy and he’d been waiting a while for his room service. Tyler finally gets the food to Chris Raiden’s room but when there’s no answer at the door he ends up using his master key and finds Chris dead of a drug overdose.
Tyler is freaked out to say the least and doesn’t end up going back in to that same room in the hotel for a couple of months because of it. When he finally does he finds Chris’s ring under the sink and puts it on. Almost immediately Chris’s ghost starts talking to Tyler and believe me, Tyler is even more freaked out but he soon discovers that Chris isn’t leaving his side any time soon. After much discussion with Chris they discover that they can’t be too far away from each other, no one else can see Chris and…the biggest one – they need to take care of Chris’s unfinished business before he can move on.
At first Tyler is pissed at the fact that he has this ghost trailing him constantly. He didn’t like Chris while he was alive and certainly wasn’t happy about finding him dead (especially as Tyler’s girlfriend blamed him for Chris’s death) so that animosity came through every day. The more time they spent together the more Tyler started to like Chris and then eventually fell in love with him. The problem with that is that he’s a ghost, of course, but that their time together has an expiration date. As soon as Chris finishes making amends he’ll go…wherever he’s going.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It had an interesting premise so I took a chance on it and I’m so glad I did! Tyler was hilarious and I loved his personality.
Chris and Tyler’s relationship was very sweet once it got going. I loved that Tyler didn’t actually like Chris at first because it seemed like it was something that would actually happen (despite the whole unreal aspect of there being a ghost involved). Tyler wasn’t star struck with Chris and that made everything better as they had to actually learn to tolerate each other. Tyler constantly gave Chris shit about his drug use and wasn’t afraid to show his disdain toward him because of it. I appreciated that the author didn’t side-step the drug use because it was such a huge part of why Chris had to make amends in the first place.
The story didn’t give me too many surprises but I really liked it none-the-less. Tyler with his humor and sarcasm, Chris with his surprising sweetness, and the engaging writing all blended to create a very different but worth-reading ghostly romance.
Rating: 4 out of 5