Photo credits: DarkmoonArt_de, Clker-Free-Vector-Images, Engin Akyurt Edited by Vaishali Title: May Day (Seekers #1) Author: Josie Jaffrey Genre/Themes: Adult Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Vampires, LGBT, Investigative procedural. Publisher: Silver Sun Books Year of Publication: 2020. Format: Paperback copy kindly provided by the author R E V I E W...
Josie Jaffrey is liable to amass a devoted readership, an author sure to compel an avalanche of bellowing supporters. This is an author who cleanly and artfully typifies Indie literature as a design to never trivialise. May Day is a burnished model of the self-publishing hustle. Plucky, irascible Jack Valentine is the barefaced and brazen lead protagonist in Josie Jaffrey’s first-in-series, May Day. An emotionally-driven dissident to the disciplinarian, she charges hastily at provocation, resistance emancipates her fortitude and she’s as duly unrefined as a dusky rock content to be in the rough. A laid-back attitude may write her off as just another insubordinate with the temper to match, but her stats are stellar, they speak for themselves, and if anyone has the projectile to challenge a tempest, It’s this impulsive Seeker who has just found herself at the heart of winding conspiracy. When a dead human is gracelessly dropped from the the heights of Magdalen College School, Jack and her fellow cohorts are there to witness the murder and are first-on-scene to investigate. A grisly slew of public murders pose a head-turning threat and this latest one is no exception. But what worries the vampire community (known as the Silver) is the potential risk to the preservation of Silver life. Exposing and bleeding into the human spotlight could unmask the Silver after a perennial history of covert co-existence. The Seekers exist to safeguard their time-hallowed and immortal race, and a Seeker though Jack is, she’s not at all in the business of making a sizeable impression on her superiors (at least not a good one). With The Solis Invicti - their sovereign’s established guard - now in immediate partnership with Jack and her division, she’s not about to change up tactics. Her friends and Seeker comrades may have a fine-tuned attention for authority, but her marginal regard for supremacy and its influential gravitas does not go by undisguised. In fact, a new murder you say? If you’ve taken a read of the prequel novella to this series, Killian’s Dead, well, you know who’s fits the bill as a ripe target for Jack… Armed with venom, a super-sized grudge and an itch to lick her wounds, Jack has pointed all the pincers of her enmity towards one of Oxford’s elite, it’s very Baron. He’s also secured her unending bitterness. She has her own ideas of righteous justice to humour, and if this bizarre investigation enables a personal hunt, let’s just say Killian Drake’s blood comes second to her favourite drink of choice. Just call her a starved Silver, a bloodhound eager to taste the fragrance of his undoing. Because Jack had plastered a price on his head two decades prior and she’s thirsty to lay a claim. But as her flaws compromise her clarity and the height of this labyrinthine case only becomes leaps more confusing and bounds more threatening, Jack is forced to leaven her hackles for an entirely different reason altogether. And no, he’s not tall, dashingly provocative and imperious. As she did 20 years earlier, Jack is reminded of how wide the powers that be can penetrate, how the powers that be might be the powers at play. Allying with Drake is about as fun as placing faith in a hornet’s nest, but Jack might have to swap out bad blood for the Baron’s support, and if he’s to possibly endanger his good faith among the Silver, she’ll have to lay down her Drake-whittled acrimony. Doesn’t mean she has to like it, but chipping away at her own credibility isn’t doing her any favours. But as the riddle intensifies, so does the relish of an ill-fitting love triangle. Josie Jaffrey has quickly secured my busybody curiosity and upbeat dependability with May Day. If reading this is anything to go by, which it is, then I can easily call myself a decided admirer of her work after just a one-time read. It’s a hallmark of a great story when you’re inspired enough to pace restlessly for a following installment, not ready to close the cover just yet. So impatient that I sent and a request for the next-in-series. I’m beyond the typical margin of excitement and only making a start on Judgment Day will pacify the craving. Set in Oxford, England, a dwelling for an imperishable race, Jaffrey envisions an atmospheric but deeply down-to-earth chronicle of investigative justice, patriarchal immortality and mystery-condensed guesswork, a whodunnit edged with warped deviance, disturbing perversion and a hapless, hot-blooded love triangle. The layered investigate mystery and the romance itself were both shining parts of this story for me. Vampire lore isn’t saturated with the heft of its perpetuated stereotype and this isn’t your carbon copy model that sports the same collective vamp quirks. Jaffrey almost bars little difference in human and inhuman behaviour, a deeply human component paints the Silvers and humans as jarringly alike. Sordid sin eludes no race. The author almost strips the unparalleled sense of dominion from the supernova species by placing them on a level plane while simultaneously imbuing them with leverage and cloaked power. Ironically, the Silver aren’t detectable sore thumbs in an isolated syndicate. They blend, they acclimate and they fit fairly neatly within society. I get the picture that Jaffrey doesn’t strictly invest in the framework of the extraordinary prodigy fated for the phenomenal. Rather, Jack is the unromantic hard-head, inconspicuous by name of the Seeker rank. Thrust into Silver life wasn’t planned and she’s not the exceptional ‘one’ favoured for genius. She’s driven to call out misdeed and monstrosity. She’s unvarnished. She’s raw. Your average person faced with a situation she can’t ignore. That’s what makes her a rather important lead for this story. That and her unrepressed compulsion. The fear won’t stymie her, her emotional whims conductive to Jack-specific handiwork. An interesting mix of careless and caring. May Day is almost as terrestrial as the day-to-day, spiced with paranormal and grotesque elements. I could easily imagine this story as a real-world script, vampires included! I’m always up for the off-beat kindling of a good love triangle and you’d be charmed to find an attractive one in May Day. You’ve got the impish, sweetened pathologist, Dr. Tabitha Ross. A trouble-free, incentivising fragrance that gives Jack pipe-dream hopes. A light beam nestled in this grim mystery. Then there’s the complete antithesis. The sumptuous, charismatic and irksome Killian Drake. Their chemistry is combustible and ferocious, quick to flame and nettle. He might be her personal irritant but he inflames her hypersensitive Silver senses like the darkest variety of molten ore. The romance excites and inspires! I love the diverse option to integrate both a male and a female love interest. With Jack as a bisexual leading protagonist who engages in same-sex relationships, I can’t liken this to any other fantasy if I’m recalling correctly. I didn’t know if this triangle of love would excite, but gosh am I provoked enough to find out. The meet-cute versus the love-hate, and I think I know who I’m rooting for with an irresistible itch…and because I'm weak in the knees for the edgier, rockier enemies-to-lovers dynamic, Drake is MY silver of choice. Jack's veins might be burning up with straightlaced antagonism for him, but mine are frayed with a different kind of passion. Jack’s cannon-balling stubbornness makes for a great investigator but not a good subordinate. But with this seemingly inconclusive case spreading wakeless unrest within the Seeker circle, one that only grows more indefinable, the answers may as well fester underground for how reachable they appear. Perhaps that’s what needs to be done though; dig deeper. Good thing Jack works like a spade. It doesn’t take long for her to accumulate a spate of her own suspicions. Profiling a saboteur and probing the life of a profoundly unsavoury man opens the box that was once dubbed Pandora’s. The truth comes at a healthy price, the price of digging, and though Jack doesn’t have the idle brawn to sit back, she’s not immune to the fear of it. She doesn’t ascribe to blind faith or devout rule, and those just might be her best assets yet. May Day is an absorbing series starter by Josie Jaffrey. Jaffrey’s urban fantasy is an original and smart first-in-series that crosses a medley of pick-and-mix. A hybrid, intercrossed blend up of a investigative procedural, crime murder mystery, modern urban fantasy and paranormal mystique with vampire mythos that feeds into a complex, duly interesting and almost macabre existence. Jack is nothing if not a hellcat in the face of the time-honoured, prevailing patriarchy. If you like your reads with an interesting slew of characters, compelling groundwork, incriminating intrigue with an operative fit to smite the status quo, this is for you. It’s true that when glass shatters, the pieces can be too numerous to assemble. Darkness sows the arcane and the cryptic. It can also hide a bounty of secrets as much as pretense can cover a myriad of sins. So when the deeply distasteful crawls out of the Silver woodwork, Jack is not content to let sleeping Silver, nor is she partial to let blood fill the cracks lest it drip from the most worthy. But amid it all, to choose between an artful nightmare or painless daydream makes me a fourth wheel desperate to see this triangle play out. A highly recommendable read! I gave this book 4 stars -A big thank you to the author for offering me a copy of May Day in exchange for an honest review! C O N T E N T W A R N I N G: Abduction, violence, blood, gore, murder, blood drinking, liberal use of f bombs and drinking alcohol. Makes reference to comatose states due to forced drug overdose (including rohypnol), drugging humans, drug use/snorting. Briefly mentions suicide and miscarriage. Sexual assault and rape mentioned retrospectively. Misogynistic attitudes and behaviours. --------------------------------------- M Y R A T I N G S Y S T E M: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read --------------------------------------- S O M E C O N C E R N S: 1) I held quite a bit of reservation for Jack as a protagonist after reading Killian’s Dead - It was a great read but I wasn’t sure if Jack was the type to garner my trust as a reader. I kept asking myself whether she would be a reliable narrator. Her almost manic emotions made me dubious of her level-headed judgement. Jack isn’t known for putting currency in caution and it’s fair to say that she is quite impulse-driven. I couldn’t tell if she was acutely singular, and hence just being Jack, or if she was just unreasonably impulsive. As it turns out though, this attribute is fitting for Jack and for her role in this story. Only Jack it seems can do what needs to be done. Only Jack can do what she does and get away with it. She's also not without her vulnerability and a lot of it is hidden behind the probing facade. I only later started seeing a bigger purpose for her character and I’m excited to see more of her development. Also why I think it was a smart choice to surround Jack with a reasonable circle of friends to reflect off of. 2) We know the Seekers are combat-trained, but for me, I really did want to see some physical combat situations. F A V O U R I T E Q U O T E S: '...But as far as the human world is concerned, I am an artistic eccentric with a driving vision, excellent taste and only a few pennies to my name. These humans are used to subsidising the arts, because that is what their rich people have done with their money for centuries. It's a way for talentless money-dealers to feel to feel that they are something more than heartless ghouls, you understand? We serve them. They pay for us, and so our art belongs to them and they can take credit for it.' 'He shakes his head, bewildered. 'Why are you like this? How long are you going to keep hiding behind a twenty-year-old fling?' 'You think I'm hiding?' 'Of course you are,' he says, leaning in closer. 'But I see you.' 'He sighs. 'Killian Drake?' 'Killian Drake.' I can feel my grin turning feral, because if there's one man in the world that I want to collar then it's him.' 'Killian Drake is an unmitigated bastard. He's rich and powerful, which is a bad place for any man to start, bit he's also arrogant and elitist, which makes him a particularly wanky breed of wanker.' 'Dr. Ross takes off her cardigan to sit down and with it comes a waft of scent that is precisely hers: jasmine and gunpowder, a floral explosion of mystery and mischief. I'm instantly captivated. 'I mean it. You're doing what you always do. You had a bit of a shaky start with the secundus , so instead of trying to redeem yourself, to show him how good you really are, you've just given up. You're sabotaging yourself, so when you fail you can tell yourself it doesn't matter, that no one is judging your actual worth, because you weren't even trying.' 'The upwardly-mobile enunciate, but the truly privileged have no use for consonants.' 'Go on, Valentine.' He pulls me in close with one hand and strokes my check with the other. 'Pretend that you want me.' I wish I had to pretend harder. Killian Drake is a man who haunts dark, shadowy places. He's the archetypal modern vampire, a denizen of lairs filled with glass, black wood and chrome. He is not the kind of person I expect to meet in a bright, sunny room filled with plants. I can't see him with a trowel in his hand, potting out seedlings. I associate him with vodka and cigars, not watering cans and secateurs. 'Yes, I'm a Seeker, and yes, we are dangerous ourselves, but Drake is dangerous on a different scale. He's insidious and clever, careful and devious. He knows how to play the long game and I have a suspicion this is part of it. His lips are warm against mine. This close, his slime Snell's like cinnamon and something darker: wet stone, iron, blood.' I want his hands to grab at me as though he were taking me against his will, because then I thought I could fight back. When he offers himself like this, there's nothing for me to fight except myself, and I've always had crummy willpower. "And how many version of Killian Drake are there in your head?' I ask, trying to brush away the intimacy of his words. 'More than you'll ever know.' His eyes are fixed on mine, dark and unreadable. 'Some versions of me get washes away with the years and some embed like bullets then fragment until they're too small to pull back out again.' 'Sounds painful' 'The pieces I can't shake aren't always the ones I'd choose to keep.' He's still now, his hand at my cheek, his thumb stroking my skin. 'It's the broken parts that get lodged in your bones.' 'This is what it's like to be wrapped up in the scent of the mark, with every pheromone telling us that we belong to each other. It's exactly like a dream, as though we've stepped beyond the world and are swaying in a space carved outside it just for us.' '...People like Percy are pitifully easy to manipulate. Power, money, fame. So dull.' 'Isn't that exactly what you want?' The corner of his mouth twitches into the ghost of a smile. 'My appetites run in other directions.' 'No, I mean yes, I am bi. But me and Killian-' 'Killian?' She raises an eyebrow. Shit. No one calls him that. It betrays a shocking lack of decorum. Or a shocking abundance of intimacy.' She's beautiful and funny and she makes me feel like someone who could actually have a proper life, maybe a family one day, instead of this liminal existence on the edge of other people's tragedies.' ‘I can tell I've broken the skin because I can smell his blood in the air with my own and it's like synthesis, as though we are breaking and merging and wounding and healing all in one.’ I'm usually riled up around him, angry and antagonistic even when he's unconscious, but there's something growing in the empty space between us now. There's a hopeless chaos to it, beyond both my control and his.' I love interacting with fellow readers, reviewers, bloggers and writers! Hearing about reader opinion is the fuel to my reader appetite, so get in touch and comment below! SHARE ON FACEBOOK Leave a comment and let's talk about |
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