Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Okay, before you say it, I know this
isn't technically a shifter book. I decided to sneak it in because a book about
a horny ghost in October was just too good to pass up. The only
issue is that it's book 2 in a series and it's going to assume we
know the main characters and their story up until now. The only remedy is to read the first book super quick so I can find out what we need to know. So here's my nickel recap of Beauty and the Bookworm (#1) which was published in 2014 and I've
never read before in my life.
We begin with our protagonist Mason
who calls himself a “cardigan-wearing, gay as a daisy,
librarian”. He lives with his “hard-core biker lesbian”
grandmother. Mason tells us that he reads too much and has sex too
little. Unless you count reading with one hand while the other
hand.......ahem.......cuffs the carrot if you know what I mean. The
main genre in his life these days is gay romance which presents a bit
of a problem because Mason begins to expect real life to go the way
it does in his books. And it never does. In case you need a visual,
Mason describes himself for us. He's 5'5” and “waifish”
with a buzzed haircut, minimal body hair and an average
sized......ahem.......weapon of ass destruction if you know what I
mean.
The story begins with Mason reading in
a park and the book he's reading (about a bunny shifter who falls in
love with a chicken shifter and the wolf shifter dom who changes
their lives) sounds right up our alley. I wonder if he'll let me borrow it when he's done. He's sitting on a bench by
the jogging trail and accidentally ends up tripping one of the
joggers going past. The guy is naturally gorgeous and built and
Mason gets what he calls a “tongue boner” just looking at
him. The guy apologizes for stepping on his feet and poor Mason
stammers his way through a very awkward exchange where he somehow
manages to compliment the color of the guy's jock strap which was exposed when the guy sprawled out on the ground. So that's
our “meet cute” folks.
Mason keeps going back to the same
bench and the runner (Shane) keeps running by but nothing
really happens until Shane twists his ankle and Mason has to drive
him to the hospital. Shane comes out all hopped up on pain killers
and tells Mason they should have sex sometime and then passes out
cold. It's the start of a beautiful relationship and I was honestly
madly in love with both of them by the time the book ended. Book one
ended about a year and a half after their first meeting with the two
of them living together in the middle of their happily ever after.
Some characters we met that might show
up again:
Mason – our gentle librarian
protagonist with a jock strap fetish
Shane – a personal
trainer/massage therapist who lives for kale and quinoa and likes
to.....ahem....give Mason oral attention while Mason reads
Gran – the aforementioned
hardcore biker lesbian grandma who took Mason in as a teen when his parents couldn't accept the fact he's gay
Millie (the Moist) – Gran's
significant other
Twyla – Mason's best friend
who got pregnant in the first book and almost selfishly ruined
Mason's relationship with Shane because she didn't want to be alone
Tallulah – Twyla's daughter
Shawn – Shane's straight,
tattooed, fresh-out-of-prison brother who ends up with Twyla by the
end of the first book
Mona Lisa – a realtor/health
food store clerk/juice bar operating, granola eating smart ass
Now on to this month's recap.
Boo! was also published in 2014. This
was my first reading.
The book begins with our beloved
protagonists Shane and Mason doing some very athletic and complicated
sounding....maneuvers if you know what I mean. Mason is about to
impale Shane like a shish kebob (if you know what I mean), when his
phone rings. He's happy to ignore it but Shane is worried because
it's 3am and you don't ignore phone calls at 3am. The call turns out
to be from Gran. She and her “domestic partner” Millie have been
caretaking in a spooky old lighthouse and Millie has just fallen down
the stairs and broken a hip. The only issue is that Millie claims
she was pushed. Gran tells Mason that the place is haunted and asks
him and Shane to come down and stay for awhile to help her get things
sorted out.
Shane and Mason pack their green jock
strap and Kindle respectively and head for the lighthouse the next
morning. Shane isn't sure staying in a haunted lighthouse the night
before Halloween is the best idea but what can they do? Gran needs
them. As they're packing up the car, Twyla arrives and reminds them
that they promised to watch Tallulah that night. They explain the
problem and she suggests they take the kid with them. Shane puts his
foot down and says they'll take Tallulah the next weekend because
there's no way they can take care of her and make sure Gran and
Millie are okay at the same time. Twyla leaves in a huff. She's
kind of a bitch and thinks she owns Mason so I'm not sorry to see her
go.
They arrive at the hospital and talk to
Millie. She says that right before her accident she used a crowbar
to open a locked attic room. It was fully furnished with an old
brass bed, some steamer trunks and a big painting. She stepped in to
get a better look at the painting and then it felt like someone
pushed her down the stairs. As she looked up, she thought she saw
Mason only he had longer hair and no cardigan. Obviously it wasn't
Mason but apparently the ghost (or dude living in their attic) looks
like him.
They take Gran down to the cafeteria to
make sure she eats something and Mason asks her why she thinks the
lighthouse is haunted. Gran says that it's the usual stuff – doors
opening and closing on their own, moaning sounds at night and someone
keep short-sheeting their bed. Then she mentions “the jumper”.
Every time there's a big storm they can see him standing on the
cliffs across the way. He stands there for a bit looking at the
ocean and then he jumps. They've seen him do this six or seven
times. Mason asks her why she hasn't called the police and she tells
him that she did. They searched and found nothing.
Gran tells them that she's going to be
staying at the hospital with Millie. In the meantime, she wants
Shane and Mason to get rid of the ghost. Shane seems like a believer
but Mason is a skeptic. I guess we need one of each. Mason is ready
to scope out some nursing homes for Gran and Millie but Shane convinces him to at least
give the ghost theory a try. Mason reluctantly agrees and stops off
at the local library to see if anyone can give them information about the lighthouse.
Lee, the local librarian, is
happy to talk with them. He tells them about Ben the
lighthouse keeper in the 1800's and his lover Patrick,
a local fisherman. One day a storm came up while Patrick was out on
the boat fishing and Ben watched from the cliffs as Patrick's boat
was broken up and sank. He walked the beach for days hoping to find
some sign of Patrick but never saw him again. Eventually he threw
himself off the cliff so he could join Patrick in the afterlife.
Shane
finds this all very romantic and starts to cry. Mason tries to
soothe him and Shane kisses his cheek. Lee, who has been calling Ben
and Patrick “special
friends” by the way,
seems very uncomfortable with this. He continues his story saying
that Ben haunts the lighthouse and people see him jumping from the
cliffs from time to time. A lot of other men have mysteriously
jumped from the cliffs over the years too.
Um.
Is
anyone else getting a bad feeling here?
Like
Lee is killing off men who have “special
friends” and letting
the blame fall to the ghost?
Yikes.
All
the men who have died are men who look like Patrick – tall, blonde and
handsome. Which perfectly describes Shane as well.
They
get to the lighthouse and Mason is immediately ready to eat and go to
bed. He wants to sleep downstairs in Gran and Millie's room since
they aren't there but Shane insists on sleeping up in what was
probably Ben and Patrick's room instead. Mason gives in and offers
to find something to make for dinner if Shane will go make sure the
brass bed has clean sheets. All Mason can find in the kitchen is
frozen dinners (“sodium
bombs”) and he
gleefully thinks that health-conscious Shane isn't going to like that
much which brings him a certain amount of joy considering Shane is
going to force him to sleep in a haunted bedroom.
Mason
is just finished nuking the dinners when Shane comes running back
down. Turns out that painting that Millie mentioned is of two men
who look exactly like Ben and Patrick. Mason freaks out and tries to
take the painting down but the frame burns his hands when he touches
it. Shane doesn't have the same issue and is able to take it off the
wall. He hangs it over the bed instead which seems like an odd
choice but Mason theorizes that he won't be able to see it there
since it will be behind them.
They
eat their dinner and go up to bed. As soon as they crawl under the
covers, the lights go out. Mason immediately begins to panic but
Shane explains it away as an old house with old wiring. He lights
some candles and calms Mason down. Mason goes to get his Kindle and
finds that his battery is dead which means he has nothing to read.
Apparently Gran and Millie aren't literary types because there's no
mention of borrowing a book from their room. Again, Shane tries to
calm Mason down, suggesting he tell Shane all about the book he's
reading instead. (It's a murder mystery called “Sniffing
Out the Deadly Dildo” about hound dog shifter detective.) Shane offers
to....ahem....pull a Lewinsky on Mason if you know what I mean and
Mason happily accepts. Then he happily returns the favor.
Afterwards
Shane mentions that he might have.....ahem....lasted longer if Mason
hadn't.....ahem....breached the brown eye if you know what I mean.
Mason is confused because his fingers were nowhere near that
particular part of Shane's anatomy. Mason denies the deed and they
both look at the painting. Ben now has a gleam in his eye and a tent
in his breeches. Shane suggests they get the fuck out of there
pronto.
They
spend the night in a hotel and then make plans to deal with the
problem over breakfast. Shane wants to call in a psychic and Mason
wants to get a priest in there to do an exorcism. They decide to do
both but finding a psychic and a exorcist on Halloween is a little
tough. They finally find one of each and make an appointment to meet
in the lighthouse. It's getting dark by the time they have
everything arranged and there's a storm brewing which Mason admits is
cliché but there's nothing he can do about that.
The
psychic arrives first and it's none other than our old friend Mona
Lisa. I guess she's a realtor/health food store clerk/juice bar
operating/psychic,
granola eating smart ass. She tells Mason that she only discovered
her powers recently after giving herself a “coffee
enema”. That'll do it
I guess. She tells them that she wants to lie in the bed for awhile
and soak up the energy. Mason offers to make her some coffee and I
die laughing.
Father
Bob the priest
appears next and he and Shane have history because of course they do.
Apparently they slept together when Bob was still in seminary
school. That guy might actually be a really bad priest. Anyway, Mason is a little jealous despite knowing that Shane would
never cheat on him. Bob sets about to bless the house. He doesn't
get far. He goes into the bedroom, gets bitch slapped by the ghost
and decides to peace out. As they watch him leave, Mason apologizes
to Shane for getting jealous and Shane says “I'll
love you and I'll punish you later”
which sounds pretty promising to me.
They
start to go back inside when the lights flicker. Mason asks where
the candles are and Shane says he didn't bring them but there's a
flashlight in the car. He turns to go get it and then the door slams
shut and locks leaving Mason on the inside and Shane on the outside.
Mason is terrified and tells Shane to get the hell out of there and
go back to the hotel until the storm passes. Shane doesn't want to
leave Mason with the ghost.
Mona
Lisa comes downstairs and Mason notices that there's a film of white
over her eyes. She goes to the window and tells Shane that he needs
to go to the cliffs. Ben will come to him and think he's Patrick and
finally be able to say goodbye and this will end. Shane agrees and
walks away. Mason is terrified. He thinks Ben has been pushing men
over the cliff but Mona Lisa says he hasn't hurt anyone. The men
went to the cliffs on their own I guess (which doesn't make sense???)
and Ben tried to talk to them to say goodbye thinking they were
Patrick. The men got so scared they ran away and over the cliff.
Then
she drops the big bomb. Mason has to let Ben possess him so he can
say goodbye to Patrick/Shane. She tells him to go upstairs and kiss
the painting. Mason only agrees because it's the only way he can get
out of the house and go to Shane to make sure Shane doesn't die. He
kisses the painting and Ben enters his body (not like that,
gutter-brain!). Mason feels surreal as he realizes he no longer
controls his own body. He can still see, hear and feel but he's just
being taken along for the ride as Ben runs frantically to the cliffs.
Shane
is there waiting and he can sense immediately that the person in
front of him is Ben and not Mason. He tells Ben that he's been
resting and it's time for Ben to rest too. Ben says he can't until
he says goodbye so Shane encourages him to say goodbye. Ben does and
then kisses Shane and then Mason loses consciousness.
Mason
wakes up in Gran's bed the next morning. Shane says Mason fainted
when Ben left his body and Shane carried him back to the lighthouse.
He's been worried sick all night because Mason wasn't waking up.
They hold each other for awhile and then decide to go see Gran and
Millie. The lighthouse seems different now. Calmer. Mason wants to
take the painting to the library to donate it because it's historical
and stuff. But when he goes to get it, Ben and Patrick aren't in the
painting anymore. It's just a painting of the sea.
It
ends there. I have to say I'm a little disappointed that Lee didn't
turn out to be the big bad but I really enjoyed the book. Yes, I admit that all the gorgeous blonde men going out to the cliffs during a storm makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE but I love the
characters (except Twyla) and I love the writing style. I'll
probably see if there are any more in the series but they won't show
up here unless a shifter gets involved.
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