Haunted on Bourbon Street (The Jade Calhoun Series Book 1)
By Deanna Chase
Rating: 3 Stars
“Jade loves her new apartment—until a ghost joins her in the shower.
When empath Jade Calhoun moves into an apartment above a strip bar on Bourbon Street, she expects life to get interesting. What she doesn’t count on is making friends with an exotic dancer, attracting a powerful spirit, and developing feelings for Kane, her sexy landlord.
Being an empath has never been easy on Jade’s relationships. It’s no wonder she keeps her gift a secret. But when the ghost moves from spooking Jade to terrorizing Pyper, the dancer, it’s up to Jade to use her unique ability to save her. Except she’ll need Kane’s help—and he’s betrayed her with a secret of his own—to do it. Can she find a way to trust him and herself before Pyper is lost?”
Where to start? Where to start….? Well, I suppose I’ll start with this…Viv Arend, New York Times bestselling author says “Sexy, seductive and simply delightful. Deanna Chase has worked magic, and I can’t get enough of Jade Calhoun and her adventures on Bourbon Street.” Huh, her adventures? This is the first book in this series and while Jade does find herself in a bit of a pickle…I’d hardly say she had “adventures.” As I recall, she barely left the block where her apartment and jobs were in this book. This makes me wonder where the comment from Viv Arend came from.
I didn’t dislike this book exactly, it had some fun parts but overall I thought it was…fine. That’s it, just….fine. That’s hardly something any author wants to hear. This book only gets 3 stars from me. That’s hardly “I hate it”, but I did feel very let down by it because the cover made it look like such fun.
This story begins well. It has a good pace, fun characters (in the beginning), and a situation that is rife with possibilities for a fun story too; it just begins to lose its way about a third of the way into the story. The characters and the story begin to deflate. Everything becomes very predictable and well…flat as cardboard.
One of the big problems I had with this story is how easily everyone accepts the events that happen. It’s as if it is perfectly normal that others see and talk to ghosts, dream walk, and perform witchcraft. I get that they live in New Orleans and oddities abound there but the acceptance was given without question or even a bit of conflict (except for Jade hiding her abilities); that just felt disingenuous when it could have created some conflict or funny moments.
Then of course there’s Jade’s ex-boyfriend. This guy is an utter asshat who dumps Jade and pairs up with one of her best buds…and they are still best buds? Seriously? Reality has surely taken a sabbatical here. This appeared to me to be nothing more than a convenient vehicle to introduce him back into the story later on and attempt to have a heartwarming reunion between friends and it just doesn’t work. I can’t imagine this scenario ever working out the way it does in the book. It’s another complete disconnect moment that could have been left out and the book would have remained the same. I guess what I’m saying is…it felt like filler material.
As for Jade, there were things about her that I liked but for a woman who was supposed to be a strong character she felt really wishy-washy to me….I just couldn’t quite get behind rooting for her and her heart of gold stripper buddies (not judging strippers btw.) There was just no substance to this story and that’s sad because I really wanted to like it.
Would I recommend this one? Mmmm, probably not. I may try another in the series just to see if it gets better, but in my view…this wasn’t a good start.
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