Margaret Millmore

"What Haunts Me" has an original and fascinating premise. Thirty-three-year-old George Sinclair, a realtor in San Francisco, on recovering from a bout of flu, discovers three things: he can see ghosts who haunt people and make them sick, he can "kill" the ghosts by stabbing them, and the haunted person returns to health when their ghost is killed.

I settled down to see what Margaret Millmore would do with this.

"What Haunts Me" is told as a first-person account in which the narrator, George, addresses the reader directly, saying things like:

"Before we go on, I should tell you a little about me so you know who I am... or was, to be more precise."
This style reminded me of early twentieth-century ghost stories, with their intimate formality, treating the reader as a confidante and companion on the narrative journey.

As I got a few chapters in, I experienced an increasing gap between the language used to tell the story and the character of the narrator telling it.

The narrator is in his thirties. He'a native of Los Angeles County, a graduate of UC San Diego and has lived and worked in San Francisco for long enough to save to buy his own place, yet the language he uses to describe the people around him seems a better fit for a well-brought-up lady in the early twentieth century than the man he's supposed to be. Here's an example of George describing to us what he sees when he enters a bar:

"A few older gentlemen were perched on the bar stools chatting with the bartender, and a couple of younger guys on the other side of the large room playing pool.?
What thirty-something man describes guys drinking in a bar as "a few older gentlemen"?

Then there's a point where he meets up with the most likely love-interest and we get this:

"I only had on my wrinkled khakis from the night before, and suddenly felt conscious of my naked upper body. Don't get me wrong, I was a strapping young man, and thought I looked pretty good shirtless. But I could actually feel her staring and it wasn’t a pleasant sensation."
We know George has been working too hard to have a girlfriend but I hadn't assumed he was a thirty.three-year-old virgin. Even if he was, what man describes himself as a"strapping young man"?

I kept forgetting George was male and picturing a slightly awkward woman as the main character.

I carried on with the book because I wanted to know what happened. The plot was quite good. There were long-held family secrets, scary bad guys, shadowy organisations and some very threatening demons.

Unfortunately, there was also a lot of, sometimes painfully slow, info-dumping and very little action, unless you count eating and drinking while people drip-feed George the truth about what's going on.

There is a big battle at the end, which was quite well set up but which lacked the tension and the thrill/panic of being involved in a life and death struggle against the odds.

There wasn't enough here for me to continue on to the second book in the series.… (mehr)

***I received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review***

What Haunts Me, by Margaret Millmore, is the first book in the budding Ghost Killers series, and yet another book in my accidental run of books set in San Francisco :P I do seem to be inadvertently attracting them lately. I love recognising landmarks like the Sutro Bath ruins and Louie’s.

George Sinclair is a man with a unique problem, or so he thinks at first. George can see ghosts, or demons, the terms being interchangeable for certain paranormal beings that tend to sport older fashion clothing, and round-rimmed glasses. Some of these are harmless, but others attach to living human hosts, like invisible parasites, and grace their unwitting victims with medical maladies.

George isn't as alone in his dubious gifts as he first believed. There are others out there who can see the spirits, and in seeing, can banish by poking them. George uses a trusty yellow pencil. A female ghost killer named Billy who saunters into George's life soon after he realises his gift uses an ornately carved chopstick.

Along with people like George and Billy, there are those out there who would exploit the gifts of the more powerful ghost hunters and warp them to create long-lived humans, and even allow for full demonic possession. Frederick Vokkel is one of these people, one who is very intimately linked to both George's and Billy’s families.

Fun stuff- this story sank its hooks into me from the beginning. It had fast pacing, and memorable characters (especially Phil). It kept me questioning things right til the end, and even there at the end were unexpected surprises. I still wanna know more about the significance of the Harry Potter/ John Lennon type glasses the ghosts all wear. Billy has a theory, but she admits it is mere speculation. The ghost killers, and their gifts and backgrounds, reminded me a lot of Grimm. Only a Grimm can tell who is a wesen unless the wesen chooses to show themselves, and the Grimm follow lineages gifted in taking out wesen. The cover is a lovely piece of awesomeness! It really fits the essence of the story within.

Not so fun stuff- there really wasn't much in the way of not so fun stuff. The manuscript would benefit from another grammar/spell check, but the errors were few and far between. My reader's mind easily glossed them over. Biggie was omission of commas when they were needed. There were a few places where it seems auto-correct decided to be special. One place is at the beginning, when George is getting on the elevator right after we first meet Justine. He refers to the other passenger as a new 'edition’, instead of a new *addition* to the building. Auto-correct, while helpful at times, occasionally makes a right muddle of things. The other day, mine decided I wanted to watch Princess Minibike instead of Princess Mononoke. Go, auto-correct! Not...

🎻🎻🎻🎻 Recommended for any who love a good paranormal thriller, along the lines of The Sixth Sense or Grimm.… (mehr)