LauraJ’s review of My Favorite Phantom by Karen Kelley
Contemporary paranormal romance released by Brava 1 Jan 09
Karen Kelley has quickly become one of my favorite comedic authors. I know without a doubt that I am going to spend a lot of time laughing and occasionally snorting while reading one of her books. It’s been a couple of books since she has tackled humor with ghosts (Double Dating With the Dead) so I was glad when she penned another ghost story. I was hoping for her to bring back Dixie and Wesley, the ghosts from DDWtD (and I’m still hoping someday she will — hint hint). No Dixie and Wesley in this book, but still a very funny and very entertaining read.
In this newest book, history professor Peyton Cache needs to hire someone to get rid of a ghost that is haunting his house and he needs this done quickly before an important dinner party he is hosting to win a potential grant. He’s up against another professor, a wannabe proper Englishman with a bad fake British accent. He calls Ghost Be Gone the only ghost exterminators in a 500 mile radius.
Kaci Melton arrives at Peyton’s house expecting to find a stodgy old professor and Peyton is anything buy old and stodgy. She doesn’t usually go out to actually rid houses of ghosts, that’s her dad’s job. She runs the back office and invents equipment for her dad, but her dad has gotten in a tight spot with a loan shark named Guido and Kaci is sent by her father to Peyton’s to get rid of the ghost and hide out until her dad is able to payoff Guido. Now as long as she can keep Peyton from finding out that little tidbit and the fact that she is actually afraid of ghosts then everything should be okay.
Almost immediately there is an attraction between Kaci and Peyton and this attraction quickly progresses when after an encounter with Peyton’s ghost Kaci ends up in his bed.
This book took me a little longer to get into (but I really think that was because of my mood), but by the third chapter I was having a hard time putting it down. The last 3 books I have read by Mrs. Kelley have been her alien/Planet Nerak which I loved. They were silly, fun books with outrageous situations. This book also shows off Mrs. Kelley’s gift for humor. She has a way of bring out “zingers” in what would seem like a more serious situation.
Kaci, although afraid of ghosts, knows how important this job is to help her father. She’s very likeable with her quick wit, finds she has a lot more determination and courage than she thought.
Peyton, while not quite the stodgy professor Kaci expects, he’s still seems a little uptight at first. But when Kaci reveals that she is indeed afraid of ghosts, Peyton wants to fire her but Kaci’s determination makes him decide to give her another chance. Peyton has other motives as he finds that he is attracted to her. This man knows how to talk to a woman. The love scenes are very hot thanks to Peyton who is an expert at using words to get Kaci hot and excited.
The secondary characters are Daniel, a co-worker and competing professor for the grant money and Edward the ghost. Daniel will probably remind readers of someone they work with, the one that seems more important and valuable than he really is. Kaci handles him quite nicely. Edward is quite mischievous in his haunting (remember the green ghost at the hotel in “Ghostbusters”?), but didn’t quite grab me as Dixie and Wesley did in DDWtD. I liked their interactions with the main characters and with each other more.
This was a very funny book that will have you laughing out loud in many places and warming up your cold winter nights. I’m not sure when Mrs. Kelley will be coming out with her next new book, but I’ll be waiting for it anxiously.
Grade: B+
Summary:
When professor Peyton Cache bought a big, gloomy, romantic Victorian house, he should have expected a ghost. He certainly got one, the kind that likes to float his undies around and drop slime in the stairwell for fun. But the professor can’t let the rest of the faculty know he’s lost his mind, so he hires a ghost hunter on the down-low. But somehow, when he booked a ghost hunter, he didn’t think that he was getting a live-in leggy blonde with an attitude like a Jersey gangster and a body like a pinup poster…Kaci Melton needs to hide out for a while, and where better to disappear than a haunted house on one of her dad’s ghost-hunting jobs? All she’ll have to do is deal with a crabby old professor for a couple of days and kick out one measly ghost. Two problems: the professor is a tasty young guy with piercing blue eyes, six-pack abs, and a penchant for talking dirty. And the ghost scares the panties off her…actually given the professor, maybe that’s not a problem. But if she can’t tell him the truth – and she can’t – how is she going to get him to keep up all that wonderful sex? Especially when she’s starting to kinda like him…
Read an excerpt here.
