B+
Genre: Historical: American, Paranormal, Romance
Grave Phantoms is the latest book in Jenn Bennett’s “Roaring Twenties” paranormal series about the Magnusson family in San Francisco. I love this series for the ambiance and the heroines, although I’ve disliked the heroes in previous books (they tend to be morally murky). This time, Bo, a Chinese American man who works for the family, is the hero and it’s by far my favorite installment in the series.
The Magnusson family is headed by Winter (yes, his name is really Winter) (please insert your own Game of Throne joke here). Winter runs a bootlegging empire and Bo is his right-hand man. Astrid, Winter’s sister, went away to college where she’s been kind of a fuck up, and there are hints that she might have had an affair with one of her professors. Meanwhile, Bo, who is a little older than Astrid, seems reeeaaaal mature but he works all the time and lives in a spare room at Winters’ house.
When Astrid comes home, several things are immediately obvious – Astrid is no longer a kid, Bo was jealous of the professor, Astrid is crazy about Bo, and both of these people need to get their individual shit together.
Right after Astrid gets home from college, on a dark and stormy night, a yacht crashes into the Magnusson’s dock. Bo and Astrid discover that the boat is full of confused passengers with amnesia. It also contains a figurine that causes Astrid to lose consciousness. The paranormal aspect of the book involves solving the mystery of the boat and figuring out how to remove the mystical influence from Astrid.
Frankly, the paranormal stuff is not that compelling. It seems to be there more to help move the characters around than do anything else. The compelling stuff is watching Bo and Astrid move from complete denial (this doesn’t last long, thank goodness) to playing with being a couple in secret, to seriously trying to figure out whether they can have a life together. Astrid grows up a lot in this book – she starts off with an eerie resemblance to Cher in Clueless but she gains more maturity as she figures out what she wants from life.
Like Winter, Bo is a career criminal. I always have trouble with the glorification of crime in this series; it’s not so much that I object to the bootlegging itself as that I realize that for Winter to build such a large business he must have done, and he must continue to do, some pretty horrible things. Presumably Bo did horrible things, too, but I personally found it easier to compartmentalize with his character. In the first two books, the heroes’ criminal exploits are central to the plot. In this one, we don’t hear much about Bo’s involvement with the business; we just know that he is involved, more out of loyalty towards Winter than because of monetary greed.
The book does not gloss over the challenges that Astrid and Bo will face as a multi-racial couple. San Francisco has historically been diverse, and although this is the first book in the series with a person of color as a main character, all the books have had a diverse supporting cast. Unfortunately, San Francisco hasn’t always been accepting of its diverse residents. In California in the 1920’s, it was illegal for Chinese men to marry Caucasian women. This is a major issue in the book. Astrid and Bo encounter racism in the course of the story and they are aware that they will not be able to marry, that they will have a difficult time finding housing, and that their children will struggle in a racist society. They are both very practical about their future but it becomes more and more obvious to them that they simply have to find some way to be together.
Astrid and Bo’s HEA will be different than other HEAs in the series because of the racism they will inevitably encounter. The reason they can have an HEA at all is that they are surrounded by a strong group of supporters, both Chinese and Caucasian, who can cushion them and their future children from some of the racism. This is very much a series about the importance of friendship and family, and that theme is strongest in this book. Both male and female characters rely on family and friendship for happiness, survival, and financial prosperity. It’s particularly fun to watch the women in the series bond because they often end up in cahoots. Astrid’s sisters-in-law helping her get her way were purely delightful. Certainly this book makes it clear that it takes a village to raise a happy couple, especially when the world at large is out to get them.
I haven’t seen any official word that Grave Phantoms is the last of the Roaring Twenties Series but the epilogue strongly suggests that it is. That makes me sad. I hope more authors will look into using the 1920’s as a historical setting because it’s a really fun time period with tons of possibilities. It has a lot in common with the Regency Period – for one thing, sexual mores loosened up considerably during this decade. I also love the fact that the series is set in San Francisco. It does a great job of portraying my favorite city (sorry, Portland – you know I love you, too). I will miss this series so much, even though the heroes were usually too “anti-hero” for my taste, because of the smart women, the gorgeous clothes, and the sightseeing around historical San Francisco. I’m so happy that Bo got his own story!
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Whew!! I have been looking forward to this book for a long time and would have been gravely effected if you had trashed it. I was predisposed to cut Winter slack, as I understand from my grandmother that Grandpa was the maker of a fine bathtub gin. I was appalled by Lowe. You can see a bootlegger as a business man, but Lowe was a thief, an out and out thief. Bo has been intriguing from the get go: clearly crushing on the boss’s sister, but too honorable to act on it. Loyal a to Winter for reasons I hope are clarified in this book. Thanks for the review.
Carrie, so agree with you about the detailed and lush and yummy SF setting and the time period. Also agree with DonnaMarie about liking Winter as a hero more than Lowe — I also liked the plot of the first installment more than the second.
I’m excited for this one!
Onto the list it goes!
I read the first two in the series and have been waiting for this one to come out. Personally, I found Astrid a little tedious in the first two books, but I’ve always like Bo and have wanted to get to his story.
Unusual time periods for romances are something I look for, but the 1920s bother me a little. I know the Great Depression is right around the corner, and I can’t help but wonder how the characters will fare with that. Also, babies born to 1920s couples will be just the right age to be in the middle of WWII, which makes me a little sad.
Ah, the problems of combining a love of romance novels with being a history geek.