Once Upon a Haunted Moor

This shorter work nevertheless manages to contain some very good characters, including a sweet and strange dog and something no one ever sees, a creepy mystery satisfyingly (if creepily) solved, and an "insta-love" romance I totally bought. So yes, I am glad this is #1 of ?

Loved this, but I can't give it more than 3.5 stars.

It's so obviously a romance - the romance side is as strong as the mystery side, so that gets my approval. Fox sets up a great meet cute and enemies to lovers train of events, but the steam quotient is zero.

It's a long time since I've read a romance where the bedroom door is sealed! it felt weird, and empty - it deprived the book of something - I want to say emotional connection with the reader. But I did connect with the MCs - with bobby Gideon Frayne and psychic Lee Tyack - as they work together on the case. Maybe it was that I didn't feel their emotional connection with each other.

(Later: Terriaminute below has nailed it as usual - it's also the insta-love between the MCs that show more left me a bit perplexed and under-convinced about the romance.)

Fox may have short changed the reader on this front, and because it is a very short novel at 3 hours on audio - but not on the writing front - her poetic writing was a joy. I'd read that she was worth reading for her writing, and Tim Gilbert's narration brought this to the fore. show less

Well, it seems that this going through my friends' recommendations is giving me a lot of both, new favourites authors and series.

Gideon Frayne is such an interesting character... Lonely, closeted and down-to-earth, he's Dark's constable, and he takes his work seriously, caring for the people in this village. So when little Lorna goes missing he goes looking for her, restlessly; but after a fortnight, after going night after night deep into the Bodmin Moor, he's running out of hope.

And then, Lee Tyack shows up. Clairvoyant Lee Tyack... Gideon is not very happy about this development and makes his thought known not only to Sarah, Lorna's mother but to Mr Tyack, too... And so, the story begins.

I love the atmospheric sense of this story, show more the local legends and superstitions, the way in which these two men connect and help each other...

The setting is haunting, the story between the characters sweet, the mystery compelling and the writing alluring. Add to that an amazing narrator as Tim Gilbert and you'll have a winner. Oh, I'm really going to go through these stories in a rush... show less

This novella has a little bit of everything: PC in a remote village on Bodmin Moor obsessed with finding a lost child, a psychic with cryptic clues, the possible presence of the Beast of Bodmin, family intrigue and a gay romance.

The romance is more central to the story than the possibly haunted moor. Our PC, son of a fierce Minister, lives in the house that used to be his father's, in the village he grew up in. He sees himself as the protector of the village and yet he is unable to admit his sexuality to the other villagers (all of whom have recognised his preferences for some time. The romance liberates the policeman from his doubts and his fears and enables him truly to be himself.

I thought the romance and the sex scenes were well show more done. I liked the intimacy between the two men: the way they talked to each other, the way they saw each other's strengths and their own weaknesses, the way they needed the comfort of the other's touch.

The crime plot was not complicated and was made even less so when it was solved by not-so-cryptic visions from the psychic. The atmosphere of distress and threat was well evoked. I didn't think the supernatural veneer added much.

If you have a choice between ebook an audio, I recommend you go with the ebook. The narrator of the audiobook does the dialogue very well but handles the rest of the text with random inflexions and a generic I-must-emote-more style that suggests a sight-read rather than a thoughtful delivery. The narrator seemed deaf to the distinctive cadence of Harper Fox's prose.

Although this was a pleasant read, it was a little too slight to make me keen to move on to the next book in the series. show less

Gideon Frayne is a hardworking local police constable in the village on the Bodmin moor that he grew up in, the village of Dark. Now, he's working on his very first missing child case--a little girl whose family he's known all his life.

And he's doubting his competence as a police officer.

It isn't a boost to his confidence when his boss sends in a psychic, Lee Tyack. Gideon regards psychics as frauds, doesn't want anyone giving Lola's mother false hope when it looks more and more like Lola must be dead, but Lee is hard to hate.

In fact, whether he can find clues to what's happened to Lola or not, he's remarkably perceptive about Gideon, his heart, and the sexuality he's been so determined to hide that it's cost him one lover show more already.

There's a good mystery here, and a good romance, too, wrapped into a short story that's the start of a mystery series. I like these characters, not just Gideon and Lee, but Gideon's coworkers and the people of Dark.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook. show less

I loved the concept and much of the execution for this story; its a great introduction to what I hope will be a great series. (Essentially give me an MC psychic and I'm happy ;) I felt some of the story was glossed over/fast forwarded and I didn't love the narrator's voice for MC Frayne, but no doubt i'll get used to it as I usually do :)

Loved the atmosphere - HF always does this so well.

Narrated by Tim Gilbert - 4 stars.

As usual Harper Fox writes the landscape almost as another character. Mysterious, evocative, and creepy.

Lovely understated romance that in other, less talented, hands would have reeked of instalove.

Can I wait 'til Christmas to read the next one? We'll see.