Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: The Ghost of Ellwood
SERIES: Ivy Grove – Book One
AUTHOR: Jaclyn Osborn
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 309 Pages
RELEASE DATE: October 22, 2019
BLURB:
“I didn’t believe in ghosts. Until I met him.”
As a horror novelist, Ben makes a living telling scary stories. However, he’s struggling in his career and fears he’s lost his touch. Not only is there a disconnect in his writing, but in his personal life as well. After his relationship goes south, he decides to start over and moves to Ivy Grove, a small town with a lot of history.
He hopes the quaint town and beautiful Victorian manor he moved into will spark inspiration and help him fall back in love with writing.
And then strange things start happening.
Creaks in the hall, shadows from the corner of his eye, and the sense that he’s being watched. Ben soon learns that the manor has a dark past, and within the morbid history, he discovers a century old mystery.
Who is Theo Blackwell? And what happened to him all those years ago?
As Ben begins to unravel the truth, he finds himself not only falling in love with writing again, but also falling for the stunning young man who haunts his manor.
*The Ghost of Ellwood is a paranormal m/m romance. You’ll find mystery, a somewhat grumpy writer, a sassy ghost, and of course a HEA.*
REVIEW:
I’m not sure how I stumbled on this book on Amazon. It might have popped up in one of those recommended lines, or I might have been scrolling through books looking for something to read. Regardless, I’m super stoked that I found it. I’ve never read anything by the author, so she was a new to me author, even though some other reviewers at Love Bytes had reviewed other books by her in the past.
In The Ghost of Ellwood we meet a best selling author named Ben. Ben has written a bunch of very successful horror novels, but his last two books were duds and his fans, for the most part, didn’t like them. One day his partner of a few years announces that he has been having an affair with Ben’s literary agent for quite some time and that he is leaving Ben. At first this seems like a bad thing, but Ben turns it around and decides to start over, in a new locale.
He jumps online and looks for a new home, quickly deciding on a huge Victorian manor home in a small town named Ivy Grove. Ben knows nothing about the town of Ivy Grove, but the huge manor is a total bargain, at about a quarter of what he would pay for the same house where he currently lives. He makes an offer, which is immediately accepted, and finds himself the owner of a house, completely sight unseen.
When Ben gets to Ivy Grove, the realtor acts strange, but Ben immediately feels at home as soon as he steps onto the property. It isn’t long before Ben finds out why the realtor was acting strange. It turns out there have been several deaths in the house, and it seems that at least one of the dearly departed has stuck around. What Ben at first attributes to old house noises turns out to be caused by a ghost. The ghost of Theo Blackwood, the son of the original owner of the home. Theo disappeared just before leaving to fight in World War 1. No one ever knew what happened to him. Will Ben find out?
I loved the growing interaction between Ben and Theo and it was interesting how the author gave them the ability to touch. At first, I was like… what?… they can touch each other… but one is a ghost? Then I kept reading and it made sense to the storyline as it progressed. I also loved the glimpses in Theo’s life and his love in the past. I was though quite horrified when I learned the details of his death.
I was happy with the HEA but was also very happy to see that there will be a book two in the series, focusing on Ben’s friend and the ghost, or should I say ghosts, that that friend met at the other haunted manor in the town. I’m hoping that Ben and Theo play a part in that book as well, since I really like these characters.
I highly recommend this book if you’re into ghost stories. It is well written, and I’ll be looking for other books by the author.
RATING: 
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