This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Linda. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romance Novella category.
The summary:
Trapped in the body of a human, the Reaper is about to fall in love with a woman he was never meant to have . . .
When a reaper is trapped in Maggie’s estranged husband’s body, she knows only that the man with her husband’s eyes feels like a stranger . . . a compelling, seductive stranger who touches her in ways her treacherous husband never could. She wants to trust him, but how can she forget the past? And what about the ghost who haunts their home, implicating him in a gruesome murder . . .
Here is Linda's review:
So immediately after I read the glorious synopsis of this novella, I gleefully messaged every friend I thought would care about how I was currently reading a corpse-possession romance novel. Unfortunately, despite my initial delight, the “reaper trapped in her estranged husband’s body” element ended up being my main issue with what could have been a solid supernatural romance.
First off, though, let the record reflect that I don’t consider reapers to be outside the realm of sexy supernaturals—especially considering the metric ton of bad self-insert Bleach fanfiction I wrote as a fourteen-year-old. So while I rolled my eyes a little when the Reaper was attracted to Maggie, our heroine, because of her super duper dazzling soul, I was completely along for the ride when he gets jerked into her husband’s dead body with the well-timed application of a defibrillator. However, instead of just being trapped in the titular Sam Sloan’s hunky bod, the Reaper also ends up with enough of the man’s memories to pretend to be him, albeit with key information such as…
…conveniently excised.
This is definitely the kind of novella that you’re not supposed to think too hard about but while I was ready to just let the weirdness wash over me, my brain just kept turning in confused somersaults. The Reaper character oscillated between not understanding anything to being extremely intuitive about human emotions and an excellent and unselfish lover despite never having had sex before.
This all is a huge shame because while the corpse-possession premise was what drew me to read this in the first place, I really liked Maggie and the children as characters, and I thought that Quinn depicted their cautiousness and hurt from being abandoned by the original Sam really well. Maggie especially was a compelling combination of crushed hopes and resilience.
That said, the romance was less a romance and more of a reconciliation, since it mostly consisted of the Reaper apologizing for the past deeds of Sam, making her a bunch of promises that things would be different, and generally not being an asshole in the ways OG Sam was. But the fact that it wasn’t the original Sam doing the groveling and attentive loving, made the entire thing ring a little hollow to me.
Also, there’s a conversation about dubious consent to be had, since Maggie sleeps with him before he tells her that he’s actually a spirit wearing her significant other like a skin suit. Since it’s a romance novella, I mentally hand-waved this during the scene itself, but now that I’m sitting here writing this out, I’m quite troubled by it. There’s no way to phrase this in a pretty way, but sleeping with someone while they think you are another person is legally rape.
While I don’t think there’s any malicious intent, it also wouldn’t be fair of me to say, “it’s okay in this case,” so that’s why this novel was downgraded from the original B- I was going to give it.
Ultimately, I was more engrossed in the central mystery of this novella (i.e. “why did Sam end up shot in a ditch and is that a ghost in the younger son’s closet?”) than I was in the romance. Overall, this is a solidly okay supernatural romance, but one that could have been truly good if it had been about the original Sam Sloan redeeming himself instead of becoming a reaper-filled piñata. Although, it would probably be much less memorable then.
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Linda
Good thing I had put my tea mug down by the time I got to the “reaper-filled pinata” line. Thanks for the review.
…”especially considering the metric ton of bad self-insert Bleach fanfiction I wrote as a fourteen-year-old”…
Replace Bleach with Naruto and I am right there with you! I have never read something that so accurately described the stuff I read as a teen. So thank you for that 🙂
Great review. It’s well thought out and really addresses the execution of the “reaper-possesion” aspect that is the big draw.
@lynette: Oh man, I also wrote Naruto fanfiction too. I spent a solid three years completely embarrassed about my weeb past when I became unbearably pretentious near the end of high school (I wish I could have all the time I spent thinking Jonathan Franzen was great back), but now I embrace it. Too bad Bleach and Naruto and all those childhood favorites of mine don’t live up to my fond teenage memories. (Although Gintama is surprisingly still great???? Probably because it’s always had a cast of badass female characters who were never RUINED to develop the characters of the dudes.) I’m glad you appreciated my review though.
@Barb: Ahh thank you.
@Linda: Yeah all those childhood anime loves make no sense to me now. I tried to watch Sailor Moon the other day (not Crystal, the 90s era one) and I found Usuki to be a bit grating. I am going to throw a weird anime suggestion out there, but in my current quest for anime, I have found that I really, really like Kill La Kill. If you google it, it will seem like NSFW ecchi fanboy service nonsense (and in the visuals you are pretty right) but the story is so great. It’s not a romance, it’s action. But the main characters are smart badass females with big ideals who are “never RUINED to develop the characters of the dudes”. The story and characterization are just so so good. The fighting outfits are not everyone’s cup of tea though so I get that, but I thought I should throw it out there.
I liked this one, although it suffered from a mild case of not entirely convincing sex scenes (I’m not sure how we’re supposed to believe that, while having sex for the first time in the most conventionally vanilla way possible, he manages to blow his wife’s mind that far). As for the major plot points, I found the resolution a little bit too neat and tidy for my taste, but I still finished it without getting bored!
@lynette: Ah I’ve seen Kill la Kill. I highly recommend Revolutionary Girl Utena actually, if you liked that. Personally, my one true love right now is actually Psycho-Pass. Akane is just a truly wonderful female protagonist and she’s quite different. Other than that Eccentric Family is pretty good and I haven’t finished a new show since basically 2014.