REVIEW: Skeletons In The Closet (Tales Of A Gay Witch book Book 1) – R.D. Noland

Skeletons In The Closet (Tales Of A Gay Witch book Book 1) Book Cover Skeletons In The Closet (Tales Of A Gay Witch book Book 1)
Skeletons In The Closet (Tales Of A Gay Witch book Book 1)
R.D. Noland
Gay Occult Horror/Fiction
Raymond D. Noland
August 14, 2020
252

So what's a young gay boy from suburbs of Dayton, Ohio to do, when he comes out to his family, only to finds out his family has been keeping their own secrets. Jason Wynwood just turned 18 finding out he is in a long bloodline of witches. As Jason searches for love, he falls for a mysterious black haired gentleman named Damien. Jason is thrown into a dangerous world of magic with witches, vampires and werewolves, and a glittery nightlife sexual pleasures. He also discovers Young gay men have been turning up dead at rest stops all over surrounding areas. Police suspect that it's the work of a serial killer. But when a friend ends up dead it becomes personal. Can Jason find the killer before anyone else turns up dead?

Reviewed by Ulysses Dietz

Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team

This has to be categorized as an enthusiastic 3 rating, because I found myself charmed both by the story and by Jason Wynwood’s character—despite the insistently unpolished and badly-edited writing. This is Harry Potter set in middle-America, presented to the reader through the eyes of R.D. Noland who, after reading his biography, could himself be Jason Wynwood. The tale is told in a matter-of-fact way, filled with unadorned yearning and a kind of awkward young-adult sex that I found weirdly endearing.

 

Jason Wynwood is the teenaged protagonist in this kitchen-sink paranormal romance set in the early 1980s. At first it just seems like the simple story of a high-school graduate who lives in suburban Dayton, Ohio, being angsty about coming out to his family. Jason works his way toward independent adulthood by means of sharing an apartment with his cousin and working as a waiter in a local Chinese restaurant.

 

Weirdly, the book actually starts with a dark prologue about a college student picking up a trick at a rest stop and apparently coming to a bad end. So, right away we know that something’s up, and it seems to be paranormal. It takes quite a while before the story ties back into the macabre opening scene.

 

Jason’s personal journey in southern Ohio becomes a three-pronged story: coming out, discovering his own magic powers, and helping his newly-found paranormal community track down a serial killer. Eventually, Jason meets Damien, a beautiful dark-haired boy who seems to be Jason’s dream date, but turns out to have his own interesting complications. It’s a bittersweet story, this one, opening the way for the second book in the series, “In The Light of The Moon.”

 

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