I received this book for free from the Author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Series: Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper #4
on May 4, 2015
Genres: Adult, Horror, Mystery, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 211
Source: Author
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Ellie Jordan and her apprentice Stacey investigate a house in an elaborate planned community that was only half-built before it went bankrupt, leaving an instant ghost town with only a few residents. The entity haunting this house is a banshee that feeds on sadness and misery.
Unfortunately for Ellie, this is no simple haunting, but just one symptom of the cursed land on which the suburban community was built. The old railroad line running through the nearby woods might just be a conduit for lost souls, including dark spirits with ill intentions toward the living. Ellie soon finds herself facing one of the most complex and difficult hauntings she’s seen in her career.
I really love the urban fantasy world that JL Bryan has created in his Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series, and he’s delivered three solid books with solid world building full of believable characters while displaying his trademark wit as the ghosts get more evil and harder to get rid of in each book. In the fourth installment Terminal, lead ghost trapper Ellie and her tech guru second-in-command Stacey, along with psychic Jacob, and newly added to the team: Ellie’s possible boyfriend Michael, face the toughest set of specters yet in a set of victim’s of a train robbery gone wrong that haunt an entire half-completed subdivision.
A dangerous new kind of ghost is on the prowl…
In each installment, JL Bryan introduces a different type of ghost that Ellie has to deal with–one that has it’s own unique sets of problems when they try to interact with it and trap it. This book’s ghost is a banshee, and it feeds off the sorrow of humans. A banshee has attached itself to a very pregnant woman in a subdivision that was only partially completed since the builder went bankrupt, and this wailing ghost feeds on the pregnant woman and her baby. But she doesn’t stop there–she targets Ellie as well with her deep well of sorrow over her parents death in a house fire all those years ago.
Not just one ghost wrecking havoc on a family here…
If this were a simple banshee case, Ellie and Stacey might have been able to get it done quickly. But once they delve into their research of the area after finding some abandoned railroad tracks when Ellie tracked a dark shadow figure into the woods, historian Grant (one of my favorite characters) digs into the dusty records and gets all the info that shows their was a train robbery where the train was blown up. Now it seems that some of the ghosts are mobile, and they certainly aren’t friendly. They’ve been stealing things from neighbors homes and breaking the unfinished homes to pieces.
Ellie takes so many risks…
I’m beginning to wonder if Ellie has a death wish. She gets the crap beaten out of her repeatedly in Terminal, but she won’t give up the fight for her clients. There are some really interesting developments with her and her boss regarding the future of the company, and she’s not sure how to feel or what she wants–especially after all of the weird things that she goes through with this case.
More layers of the characters were peeled back…
Stacey’s family legacy is revealed, and she gets a bit too flirty and touchy-touchy with everyone in my book. She seems to genuinely like Ellie, but I can’t help but feel that something is coming with Stacey in the next book. Jacob wasn’t in the book a ton, but I enjoyed him when he was there–even though someone else had their psychic moments that overshadowed his. Michael first made his appearance in the last book, and he shows that he’s game for doing anything that Ellie asks him to–just so he can actually spend some time with her.
I give Terminal a five out of five. I really loved how more things from previous books were coming into play in this one, but you didn’t have to read the other books to understand what was going on. JL Bryan’s dry wit and warped sense of humor was very en pointe in this novel, especially with Stacey’s family heritage and the take off on a certain country restaurant that infects a good portion of interstate turn off’s across America, where everything seems to come with a heaping helping of gravy. While the scares might not have been intense, the danger in this one was ramped up to the max, especially for Ellie. I really was wondering if she would make it out intact at the end of the book. I really look forward to the next book, especially with a few of the things that are set up in this installment for the next.
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Some of those characters really seem to have a death wish, you know? Yay for a 5-voodoo-doll-read!
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