When Sage goes to check on Lucy, her fellow werewolf friend, she finds dangerous, enigmatic warlock Oren in Lucy\u2019s Manchester, England, apartment. He\u2019s investigating her brutal murder to determine if it\u2019s an Upside, or human, crime, or a Downside, or supernatural, one that would fall in his jurisdiction. Though Oren feels something about the crime scene is off, it\u2019s Sage who discovers the supernatural link. Roderick, Oren\u2019s captain in the Arc\u0101num (paranormal police), knows Sage\u2014she\u2019s applied many times, but the Arc\u0101num only hires warlocks. Still, he gives her Lucy\u2019s case as a trial, forcing solitary Oren to take her on as a temporary partner. The slow-burn first third of the book introduces the secret supernatural society while the investigation unfolds and the characters\u2019 interactions reveal Sage\u2019s survivor\u2019s guilt\u2013induced motivations and peel back Oren\u2019s prickly layers. The immersive worldbuilding mitigates the slow initial pace and Oren\u2019s not-so-pleasant personality until the heroes begin to thaw toward each other in a rewarding development. Once the murder mystery plot picks up steam and complexity, the narrative tension builds until the climax, which is a mixed bag\u2014the solution to the mystery is nifty but comes via a villain\u2019s monologue and relies on a foundation of side characters\u2019 work rather than the protagonists\u2019 efforts. Most characters present white.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Sage goes to check on Lucy, her fellow werewolf friend, she finds dangerous, enigmatic warlock Oren in Lucy\u2019s Manchester, England, apartment. He\u2019s investigating her brutal murder to determine if it\u2019s an Upside, or human, crime, or a Downside, or supernatural, one that would fall in his jurisdiction. Though Oren feels something about the crime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}