Blood & Ash by Deborah Wilde

Ashira Cohen takes pride in being the only female private investigator in Vancouver. With her skills, her missing persons case should be a piece of cake.

Title:  Blood  & Ash
Author:  Deborah Wilde
Series:  The Jezebel Files #1
Publish Date: January 14, 2020
Source:  NetGalley audiobook

Publisher’s Description: Cold-blooded kidnappers. Long-lost magic. When things get serious, she goes full Sherlock.

Ashira Cohen takes pride in being the only female private investigator in Vancouver. With her skills, her missing persons case should be a piece of cake.

She wasn’t counting on getting bashed in the skull, revealing a hidden tattoo and supernatural powers she shouldn’t possess.

Or the bitter icing on top: a spree of abductions and terrifying ghostly creatures on a deadly bender.

And don’t even get her started on the golems.

Reluctantly partnered with her long-time nemesis Levi, the infuriating leader of the magic community, Ash resolves to keep her focus on the clue trail and off their sexual tension because WTF is up with that?

But with a mastermind organization pulling strings from the shadows and Levi’s arrogance driving her to pick out his body bag, can Ash rescue the captives and uncover the truth or will the next blood spilled be her own?

Nervous Nellie’s nervousness necessitates knowledge of the novel. In other words …SPOILERS. *BEWARE*

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Nervous Nellie says…

This was, as advertised, a snarky book. I did like it, but it had to grow on me. At first, Ashura kind of got on my nerves. She was just another Charley Davidson wannabe. I stuck with the book and by the time the kidnapping took place, I was firmly entrenched.

As the personality of the protagonist started becoming more dimensional, she started making me care for her. She hasn’t the best life has to offer, but she is making it. After getting hit on the head, she was stunned to discover she was a magic user (called Nefesh) and also that she was warded to keep her magic firmly stoppered. As the book proceeded, the story kept winding around and overlapping in other mysteries that Ashura found herself. There were weird “things” that Ashura could see slithering around victims that ended up dead. There were magic haters and fear mongers and politicians that wanted them gone.

The author made Ashura’s nemesis an egotistic, arrogant and Uber privileged jerk. They also grew up together, which I thought was an interesting thing to mention before the story actually did. It made the things Ash said and felt more understandable. Levi was the head of the “House” of Nefesh. There are other “Houses”, but that wasn’t important to know for story purposes.

I found that Ash’s obsession with Sherlock Holmes endearing and not annoying. She and her best friend had nicknames which was cute. Ashura was Jewish and covered some interesting things regarding Golems and also where the term “Jezabel” originated. Ash had good side characters- her sidekick and the neighbor next door. They didn’t have a lot of depth but enough, I suppose, for secondary characters. Her mother and father played a part and even the scary supervillian modeled after a mafia queen pin. The book had a good mystery, had a bit of a cliffhanger (not bad, though) and left the door open for another book.

There wasn’t a lot of graphic death, but there was some. There wasn’t a lot of sex, but there were two scenes and it wasn’t something that the book depended upon to make the story good. It was a nice little side note and a glimpse of a relationship builder.

The narrator was pretty good. She didn’t have a LOT of voice variation, but the characters did have their own voices. She didn’t seem to be reading the book, more like making it come alive. All in all, I’d give this book a 4.

 

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