Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Fish and Ghosts 
SERIES: Hellsinger #1
AUTHOR: Rhys Ford
NARRATOR: Tristan James
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
RELEASE DATE: September 2, 2014
LENGTH: 8 hours, 16 minutes
BLURB:
When his Uncle Mortimer died and left him Hoxne Grange, the family’s Gilded Age estate, Tristan Pryce knew he wasn’t going to have an easy time of it. He was to be the second generation of Pryces to serve as a caretaker for the estate, a way station for spirits on their final steps to the afterlife. The ghosts were the simple part. He’d been seeing boo-wigglies since he was a child. No, the difficult part was his own family. Determined to establish Tristan’s insanity, his loving relatives hire Dr. Wolf Kincaid and his paranormal researchers, Hellsinger Investigations, to prove the Grange is not haunted.
Skeptic Wolf Kincaid has made it his life’s work to debunk the supernatural. After years of cons and fakes, he can’t wait to reveal the Grange’s ghostly activity is just badly leveled floorboards and a drafty old house. The Grange has more than a few surprises for him, including its prickly, reclusive owner. Tristan Pryce is much less insane and much more attractive than Wolf wants to admit and when his Hellsinger team unwittingly release a ghostly serial killer on the Grange, Wolf is torn between his skepticism and protecting the man he’d been sent to discredit.
REVIEW:
I’ve had this book on my TBR for a long time now and figured I needed to change that and actually pick the book up. I’m so glad that I did, I loved every minute of it.
When Tristan Pryce was about nineteen he inherited the family estate, Hoxne Grange, from his uncle. With the estate came a huge responsibility and one few people understand and even fewer believed in. The estate was a way station for spirits crossing over into the afterlife. Tristan’s job was to check the guests in for the duration and in general take care of the estate and its inhabitants; be it Jack the dog that won’t stop playing fetch, to the Victorian cook coming around every Tuesday asking for a job. It’s a life he can’t imagine not doing, it’s who he is in his core.
Unfortunately his family is far from supportive and do not believe in spirits or things that go bump in the night. They hire Wolf Kincaid from Hellsinger Investigations, who is dedicated to disprove all paranormal activity. They hope Wolf will help them declare Tristan mentally ill in hopes to take over the coveted estate. Wolf does not believe in the paranormal – even though his family has made a living out of it for a very long time. Still he wants to expose frauds and is convinced the job at Hoxne Grange will be another routine one. It’s not long until things really do go bump in the night, and unexplainable things starting to happen. And when one of his team accidentally lets a ghostly serial killer loose things take a turn for the dangerous.
This is my kind of book. I don’t mean to say that I want to read them exclusively, but still, I loved this story. The ghosts. Tristan’s abilities. The overall feel and atmosphere of the book. It hooked me from the start, feeding my addiction to know more and more of the strange place that was the Grange.
I enjoyed Tristan and Wolf together. The instant dislike, the griping and bickering. Nothing too serious – but they were not friends. Then strange things started happening around the manor and Wolf started opening up, just a tiiiiny bit mind you, to the possibilities that the estate might just be haunted after all. The romance, once started, was a bit fast. I mean Wolf and his team only spent a few days at Hoxne Grange yet they still developed something deep… I’m sceptic but it’s also something I can live with.
Tristan James really worked for this book. There’s something about his earlier works that really does it for me. He captured Tristan and Wolf the essence of the house. He took you to the Grange where you met Jack, saw the fireflies and felt the wonder. He brought it to life, from Tristan’s dedication to the spirits coming to the estate to Wolf’s exasperation and scepticism of all things paranormal. It was all there in his voice and it made it a joy to listen to for these past hours.
Fish and Ghosts was a really good start for a series and I can’t wait to listen to the next one to see what else might happen. Maybe Wolf will turn into a true believer and leave all of his scepticism behind?
RATING: 
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