GtPGKogPYT4p61R1biicqBXsUzo" /> Google+ Series Review: The Love-Haight Case Files, Books 1 & 2 by Jean Rabe, Donald J. Bingle | I Smell Sheep

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Series Review: The Love-Haight Case Files, Books 1 & 2 by Jean Rabe, Donald J. Bingle

by Jean Rabe, Donald J. Bingle
August 23, 2021
ASIN: B098J8L6W5
Supernatural beings are willing to fight for their legal rights!

Since the Summer of Love, the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco has been known for attracting weird and unconventional souls, but things got even stranger when the monsters moved in. 

Magic has returned to the world and with it a host of supernatural creatures—not just vampires and ghosts, but sentient gargoyles, ghouls, sprites, faeries, and more. The frightened citizenry, holier-than-thou bigots, headline-seeking reporters, and harried police refer to them as OTs (Other-Than-Humans), but Thomas Brock and Evelyn Love believe even supernatural creatures have legal rights. 

Delve into their case files for a genre-bending mix of mystery, horror, suspense, thrills, courtroom drama, and romance. The city’s OT element is sometimes malevolent, sometimes misunderstood, and often discriminated against. Brock and Love represent them all, dead, undead, or alive—whatever the case, whatever the species. 

**Winner of three prestigious Silver Falchion Awards **
for mysteries, thrillers, and suspense novels: Best Fantasy, Best Urban Fantasy, and Best Multi-Genre Novel. 
Love-Haight is a comedy, locked within a mystery, hidden in a horror story... Wonderfully clever, stylish, and ghoulish. Delightfully twisted fun! —William C. Dietz, New York Times bestselling creator of The Legion of the Damned

Making the freakiest burg in the nation ten times freakier is a considerable achievement. —Glen Cook, bestselling author of The Black Company series
Nowhere--not in the blurb or the MPG tags on GR--does it say that the first book is a collection of short stories! Imagine my confusion on finding huge sections of info dumps in multiple stories that only relayed the same information! I couldn't understand why that was happening, and it made me want to put down the book several times! I only found out once I read other people's reviews on GR.

What made me even sadder was that the authors use authentic criminal law as the basis for how our protags react to each new threat. So, what you get are two characters behaving like real lawyers would have if they lived in a world where the OT had outted themselves. All that hard work, and I would have put the book down because of the repetitiveness.

Now for the book itself. It's set in an interesting world that's populated with equally attention-grabbing characters. I like that even though our protagonists are genuinely good people, um individuals, they still make selfish decisions. It only made them more real to me. I want to read more about them and keep reading! That's why I continued with the second book.
(review below)

2 very disappointed and misguided sheep.






ReviewerMidu Reads
Most of my go-to series are 3 starrers
*No rating - wasn't my genre/dnf'd so rating it would be unfair
1 sheep - won't be picking up another book in a series again
2 sheep - average read with overused tropes and cliches. Will give the author another try/only continuing because of OCD, so must finish a series
2.5 sheep - liked the book but was put off because it was overly long/illtreatment of a character the author had me invest in and so on.
3 sheep - enjoyed the book but have reservations because I expected to be wowed and wasn't
4 sheep - was unputdownable
5 sheep - formed an emotional connection, will read the heck outta this series



The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 2: Fighting for Other-Than-Human Rights
September 20, 2021
With the return of magic to the world, how will the law evolve?

Perfect for fans of Urban Fantasy, Evelyn Love and Thomas Brock love the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, love the law, love representing the rights of supernatural OTs (Other-Than-Humans) who accompanied the return of magic to the world, and just might love each other, even though Thomas is a ghost.

But with discrimination against OTs on the rise and the entire law office staff living under threat of death or worse, the cases are darker, the mysteries are murkier, the clients are more desperate, the stakes are higher, and the parallels to the real world are even more compelling.

Book 2 of The Love-Haight Case Files tells four new, stand-alone tales of mystery, horror, suspense, action, and romance in a legal procedural/urban fantasy where love and danger both flourish in unexpected ways.


Fared much better with this installment than I had with the first one. I read reviews and determined this one was going to be an anthology as well. So, I was prepared--mostly. Still found the repetitions irritating. I mean, I get that individual stories could end up part of other anthologies, so it's important for them to contain a bit of a backstory. However, those parts need to be edited out if all stories are going into the same volume.

In this book, we meet a nixie, zombies, and more ghosts. And while I liked that Evelyn finally took measures to protect them all from round-the-clock death threats, I feel she should have done this earlier. In any case, it's done now, which gives their bunch a better chance of survival and to stop waiting and take the war to Thomas's dad--something I'm excited to see come about.

As before, this collection left me wanting more. Finding out who wins--Thomas or his dad--seems like something I should know lol.

3 happy and floofy sheep





ReviewerMidu Reads
Most of my go-to series are 3 starrers
*No rating - wasn't my genre/dnf'd so rating it would be unfair
1 sheep - won't be picking up another book in a series again
2 sheep - average read with overused tropes and cliches. Will give the author another try/only continuing because of OCD, so must finish a series
2.5 sheep - liked the book but was put off because it was overly long/illtreatment of a character the author had me invest in and so on.
3 sheep - enjoyed the book but have reservations because I expected to be wowed and wasn't
4 sheep - was unputdownable
5 sheep - formed an emotional connection, will read the heck outta this series


Jean Rabe

website-FB-twitter
Jean Rabe writes with dogs wrapped around her feet. She wears mismatched clothes and 18-year-old worn-out (but seriously comfortable) sandals to work. When the weather is fine she writes on her back porch. Jean loves summer.

She calls herself a mutt because she writes bits of this and bits of that, not sticking to one genre. She writes mostly mysteries, but also urban fantasy, high fantasy, and sometimes science fiction.

She began getting published when in the sixth grade, studied journalism at Northern Illinois University, then went to work as a news reporter…eventually for Scripps Howard, where she managed their Western Kentucky bureau. Getting itchy feet, she moved to Wisconsin and went to work for TSR, Inc., the then-producers of the Dungeons & Dragons game. She dipped her itchy feet into the fiction pool and wrote Dragonlance novels for several years. Now she’s back in Illinois, surrounded by train tracks that offer music to write by. And there are plenty of dogs in the neighborhood to provide an accompaniment.

She is a recipient of the Faust, the grand master award of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the Illinois Author Project’s Soon-to-be Famous Award. She’s won three Silver Falchion awards from Killer Nashville, with co-author Donald J. Bingle. Jean has also been on the USA Today’s Bestseller list several times.

She’s written more than forty fantasy, mystery, and adventure novels (including some ghosted projects), more short stories than she’s bothered to count, and edited magazines and anthologies. She is a member of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) and the International Thriller Writers (ITW). Her website: www.jeanrabe.com.

When writing, she listens to classical guitar and 60s rock. And at every good opportunity she tosses tennis balls for her cadre of dogs.

Donald J. Bingle

website-FB-Twitter
Random true facts about Donald J. Bingle: He was the Keeper of the World's Largest Kazoo. He made up the science of Neo-PsychoPhysics for a time travel roleplaying game. He once successfully limboed under a pole only nineteen inches off the ground. He has written short stories about killer bunnies, civil war soldiers, detectives, Renaissance Faire orcs, giant battling robots, demons, cats, werewolves, time travelers, ghosts, time-traveling ghosts, spies, barbarians, a husband accused of murdering his wife, dogs, horses, gamers, soldiers, Neanderthals, commuters, kender, Victorian adventurers, lawyers, and serial killers (note the serial comma). Of those subjects, he has occasional contact in real life only with dogs, cats, gamers, lawyers, and commuters (unless some of those are, unknown to him, really time travelers, ghosts, demons, serial killers, spies, and/or murder suspects). He was once hit by lightning. He was the world's top-ranked tournament player of classic roleplaying games like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for about fifteen years.

No comments:

Post a Comment