Review: The Charlatan's Conquest by Vivien Dean

The Charlatan's Conquest (Phantom Fixers #1) (Dreamspun Beyond #2) by Vivien Dean
Dreamspinner Press, Goodreads, Amazon, Audible
Novel: 216pgs

3 Pants Off

Blurb: A Phantom Fixers Story

With love and ghosts, the challenge is figuring out what’s real.

Software engineer Cruz Guthrie needs money for his sister’s cancer treatments. He needs it so badly he’s willing to stand in for a ghost hunter friend and investigate a millionaire’s supposed specters. It should be an easy gig—after all, nobody thinks the haunting is real.

Neurological researcher Brody Weber is furious that Cruz would take advantage of Brody’s father. But his mind changes when spirits manifest—and he realizes Cruz genuinely wants to help. When they learn the paranormal activity centers on Brody, Cruz is willing to fight to free Brody from the entities determined to make his life miserable. With a little help from friends and family—both living and dead—they must figure out why Brody is attracting spirits and how to banish them. Only then can they pursue a future together.

Review

The Charlatans Conquest is the second book in the Dreamspun Beyond series and quite a disappointment for me. I really wanted to like it because ghosts man but failed to wow me… 

Cruz Guthrie has decided to fill in for his ghost hunter best friend. While he isn’t 100% behind the idea he would greatly benefit from the twenty thousand payout that would help with his sister medical bills. He doesn’t like the idea of doing a job that Etienne has already proven the lack of ghosts but the client is sure that he is being haunted and won’t take no for an answer. So spending 2wks doing a house cleansing seems like a money making vacation. What should have been a super easy job comes with some complications when the clients son Brody Weber shows up, and clearly Etienne was wrong because the house is haunted and there is more than one ghost. 

Brody doesn’t want anyone taking advantage of his father and clearly this charlatan is. Pretending he’s a ghost hunter and feeding his father s disillusionment, but Brody has got a secret that makes him a hypocrite and also a tad bit on the stupid side. Brody knows his father isn’t being haunted and he knows the strange happenings have everything to do with him. For someone who deals in neurology his brain is real slow on the uptake.  Now he has to deal with his attraction for Cruz and also realize for all these years his ass has been haunted by some trouble-making possible malevolent ghosts (who knew).  

Now it’s up to Cruz and Brody to figure out how to rid Brody of his hitchhikers while also falling into serious like. Cruz is this sweet family orientated guy who really wants to help Brody and Brody just wants to have a little bit of normalcy. Things are moving forward but first they’ve got to exercise some ghost. 

I wanted to like this a lot more because umm ghost and creepy are my thing but this really failed to spook or keep my interest. The writing was good, and the story was nice but overall I became bored and lost interest. The relationship between Cruz and Brody is hella sweet and Cruz’s friend Etienne offers up some intrigue as to how he started seeing ghost and made it his job, so I’m definitely interested in that. Otherwise there wasn’t much here for me. 

Overall, an alright read but it missed its mark with me….