The Particulars: Urban Fantasy, Carina Press, available as e-book

The Source: Purchased at Kobo

The Grade: C

The Blurb:

A migration of mythical creatures has begun, and more and more of them are landing on Zoey Donovan’s doorstep. As the only Aegis left in the country, it falls to her to protect the Hidden and keep them safe—and her house has become a sanctuary for water sprites, goblins, harpies, djinn and more.

Keeping track of her boarders is a full-time job, and Zoey’s already got her hands full trying to run her wedding planning business. Good thing she has a resident closet monster to keep her organized, and a hot Reaper boyfriend to help her relax every once in a while.

But she can’t keep up monster-triage indefinitely, and as more Hidden arrive, it becomes clear that someone—or something—is hunting them. In the midst of planning an event for a notoriously difficult client, Zoey’s got to figure out who’s behind the hunt…and she’s got to stop them before there are no Hidden left.

The Review:

This is the third book in R.L Naquin’s Monster Haven series, and it stands reasonably alone. However, I recommend that you read, or re-read, the previous two books, since there was a couple of times I wished I had re-read the previous books before reading this one.

This book deals with the consequences of the last book. It was interesting to see how Zoe struggled with balancing her Wedding Planning business and her duties as an Aegis. I really liked how Ms Naquin gradually revealed why the Hidden was flocking to Zoe’s house.

The Hidden that arrived at Zoe’s house was fugitives, and most of them were peaceful, but a bit mischevious. I really liked that new characters played important roles in the book, since often the story is focused on the same characters.

The villain was an interesting contrast, since there was nothing nice about the Collector. Her ruthless, and the fact that there were people willing to cater to it, was chilling.

The plot was well written, and there was some interesting twists in the story. I really liked how it slowly was revealed that the problem with the Hidden was tied to the event Zoe was planning. But there was also smaller plot twists, that was connected to events in previous books.

While there was several things I liked with this book, there was also several things I didn’t like. The biggest problem I had was a lack of tension. Both inform of sexual tension between Zoe and Riley, but also in general. I never felt that the plot built towards an confrontation with the villain.