Bridal Jitters (Harmony #0.5) - Jayne Castle

Bridal Jitters

by Jayne Castle

prequel novella, book 0.5 of Harmony series

 

**This series is also known as the Ghost Hunter series, and intersects at various points throughout with the Arcane Society series, written by Jayne Ann Krentz as Amanda Quick.   Jayne Castle is another of Jayne Ann Krentz's pseudonyms.

 

Virginia Burch, a psychic archeologist, can't believe her luck when she meets Sam Gage, a ghost hunter and owner of prime real estate in the Old Quarters of Cadence, above the Dead City.  He offers her his space to live and start up her business.  What follows is an even more intriguing proposal-to become his wife.  Strictly for professional reasons, of course.  Their marriage of convenience would lead to a very lucrative business partnership, Gage & Burch Consulting. Until something throws a wrench into the plan: the undeniable sensual energy that naturally exists between them-and a love so strong that it could wake the ghosts below.



Bridal Jitters is a pretty good introductory to Jayne Castle's Harmony series (also known as Ghost Hunters series).  It's a very straight forward telling, basing off of a romance with a "marriage-of-convenience" trope, which actually means something slightly different within the scope of the story's world.  Bridal Jitters doesn't dwell too much on world building or back history of the Harmony world, but we get a sense that it takes place sometime in the future and that psychic energy and psychic powers are very much a norm here, as are alien beings and something called UDEMs, unstable dissonant energy manifestations, that they also call ghosts.

I'm not entirely sure what the timeline of this world is, and DID have a little trouble figuring out what was going on in the very beginning, but afterwards, things started making sense. So in a way, I kind of liked the rapid-fire way in which everything was just introduced as if it were all normal, everyday occurrences.

First and foremost, though, I understand that this book was really a paranormal romance set to the background of a paranormal romantic suspense. Virginia and Sam were a nice couple, but nothing out of the ordinary as far as romances go.

But still, Bridal Jitters did very well setting the stage for the rest of the series and I'm quite interested in continuing on.


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2016 Reading Challenges:
• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge
• Bookish Resolutions Challenge -- New to Me Author #10

Source: http://anicheungbookabyss.blogspot.com/2016/04/brief-thoughts-bridal-jitters.html