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A review by kblincoln
Hold on Me by Pat Esden
4.0
I received a copy of this through a Goodreads giveaway with the understanding I would review. Confession: Author Pat Esden and I have exchanged writerly critiques in the past, so it's possible this isn't the most objective of reviews.
Anyway. Knowing about Pat's expertise with antiques isn't necessary to fully jump into this story of antique dealer Annie and her dementia-stricken father's forced return to his family home of Moonhill. But the mentions of auction behavior, lovingly described antiques, and authentic take on dealing sure made me smile :)
Annie has lost the legal guardianship of her demented father when a customer, to whom she'd just sold a poison ring, blabs to Annie's estranged Aunt and Grandfather that her father is no longer quite in his right mind. She is forced to bring him to Moonhill, the seat of Freemont family, who have inhabited many of her father's wild tales about finding rare objects.
What follows is a spin on the old return-to-gothic-ancestral-home-and-find-ghosts kind of tale. Only this isn't quite your usual gothic, nor are the shadows Annie begins to see your usual ghosts. Annie finds a pentagram drawn with salt under her bed the first day, encounters a handsome servant--Chase--with a fondness for knives and sheep, and begins to see her father's strangeness might not actually be dementia at all.
This is not YA. There is an assumed sexual experience with twenty-something Annie as well as references to throbbing nether regions. Things get a bit hot and heavy between her and Mr. Love Interest, although it never teeters all the way into bodice-ripper territory. It's definitely in the territory of New Adult, as Annie is still finding her own identity.
Kudos to Pat for not giving away too much of Moonhill's secrets in the beginning. It took me a while to catch on to the nature of the shadows as well as what exactly the Aunt and Grandfather saved Chase from. The timeline of Annie's mother's death, etc, got a little fuzzy for me at the end of the book, and sometimes Selena seemed a bit erratic personality-wise, but Annie herself had a great mix of phobia, questioning, and moxie to pull off a great tale.
I enjoyed the book the most when Annie brought the sass to her inner thoughts:
"The last thing I needed right now was a romance-- especially with a hot, baffling guy who said scary shit, told half-truths, and had already sizzled his way into my fantasy life."
New adult returns to ancestral home and discovers secret family history and a hot love interest.
Anyway. Knowing about Pat's expertise with antiques isn't necessary to fully jump into this story of antique dealer Annie and her dementia-stricken father's forced return to his family home of Moonhill. But the mentions of auction behavior, lovingly described antiques, and authentic take on dealing sure made me smile :)
Annie has lost the legal guardianship of her demented father when a customer, to whom she'd just sold a poison ring, blabs to Annie's estranged Aunt and Grandfather that her father is no longer quite in his right mind. She is forced to bring him to Moonhill, the seat of Freemont family, who have inhabited many of her father's wild tales about finding rare objects.
What follows is a spin on the old return-to-gothic-ancestral-home-and-find-ghosts kind of tale. Only this isn't quite your usual gothic, nor are the shadows Annie begins to see your usual ghosts. Annie finds a pentagram drawn with salt under her bed the first day, encounters a handsome servant--Chase--with a fondness for knives and sheep, and begins to see her father's strangeness might not actually be dementia at all.
This is not YA. There is an assumed sexual experience with twenty-something Annie as well as references to throbbing nether regions. Things get a bit hot and heavy between her and Mr. Love Interest, although it never teeters all the way into bodice-ripper territory. It's definitely in the territory of New Adult, as Annie is still finding her own identity.
Kudos to Pat for not giving away too much of Moonhill's secrets in the beginning. It took me a while to catch on to the nature of the shadows as well as what exactly the Aunt and Grandfather saved Chase from. The timeline of Annie's mother's death, etc, got a little fuzzy for me at the end of the book, and sometimes Selena seemed a bit erratic personality-wise, but Annie herself had a great mix of phobia, questioning, and moxie to pull off a great tale.
I enjoyed the book the most when Annie brought the sass to her inner thoughts:
"The last thing I needed right now was a romance-- especially with a hot, baffling guy who said scary shit, told half-truths, and had already sizzled his way into my fantasy life."
New adult returns to ancestral home and discovers secret family history and a hot love interest.