Stage Fright: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Bewitching Midlife Crisis Mysteries) by Dakota Cassidy 
Series: Bewitching Midlife Crisis Mystery #1
Published by Tantor Audio on August 29, 2022
Genres: Paranormal/Urban Fantasy
Pages: 276
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Traci Odom
Length: 6 hrs 13 min
Source: Tantor Audio
I received this book for free from Tantor Audio in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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If you want to know who unalived you, I'm your girl. Evanora Lavinia Dark at your service!
Heart attack/stroke/open-heart surgery survivor, new-lease-on-life starter, astral-projecting-ghost-talker.
And most importantly, a witch over fifty with bursitis, blood pressure meds, and zero effs to give.I’m done with corporate life—or maybe it was done with me first— and after a life-changing stroke followed by a heart attack and a subsequent quadruple bypass. All this just before boarding a plane for my lifetime dream trip to Hawaii.
Clearly, it was time for a change.
So I moved back to my hometown and my passion. Interior design. I have no experience, no degrees in the field, but I jumped in with both feet and opened my own house staging business--Stage Right. Nowadays, you can find me happily decorating houses for my best friend, house flipper, and real estate agent, Fabiola Fabrizio.
Together, we’re determined to give our town, Buttermilk Bay, located in Massachusetts (not far from Salem) a facelift and bring in young families to stir up the economy. Little by little, people are beginning to take notice of my work and hiring me on the daily and that’s great for my bank account.
There’s only one problem. Ghosts. Sooo many ghosts. Ghosts I started to see after my bypass surgery (cliche, right?). Ghosts who were murdered and need my help to solve the mystery surrounding their deaths. Do you have any idea how hard it is to carry a fifty pound chandelier while a ghost is in your ear, hassling you to find their killer?
When a guy named Ferris Leopold is found dead at the house next door to the one I’m staging, it’s full steam ahead to solve his murder. Or is it? Ferris was a lowdown dirty, albeit petty thief in life and I’m struggling to set aside my morals in order to help him.
But as I dig deeper into Ferris’s past, meet a hot AF silver fox of a man, and explore my new powers in the process, I discover not everything is as it seems...
I like the idea but the story was boring.
Evanora Lavinia Dark is a woman in her 50s who recently survived a massive cardiac event. After her near death experience, Evanora (or Evan) now speaks with ghosts. It helps that Evan is a witch by blood.
Those ghosts mostly have unfinished business, like who might have murdered them. And she can also speak with her deceased father, but once she learned of his secret life of crime after his passing, she hasn’t forgiven him enough to really want him around yet.
Evanora is a big fan of murder podcasts so she is mostly excited to help the spirits solve their crimes, although she mostly calls in anonymous tips. Really, how would she explain to the police that the dead guy told her what happened.
I liked the idea of this story. I even liked Evanora who left her stressful HR job to stage houses for local realtors, including her BFF, Fabiola Fabrizio. Fabiola was gung-ho about helping Evanora solve ghostly mysteries until she gets knocked out by a suspect. Fab spent too much time watching over her dying friend to allow her to get close again. So now that leave Evan skulking around behind her friend’s back.
Evanora is also introduced to a hot local contractor who is a love interest but aside from asking about her and bumping into her a few times, he is just a hot guy in the background.
I know this was a cozy mystery but it was more a boring mystery. Evanora is trying to help the ghost who was killed trying to steal a spoon from a local second-hand store. Apparently this spoon dates back to Roman times. That’s it. Evanora is trying to find a spoon and more bodies keep showing up–over a spoon.
Dakota Cassidy also writes my favorite witch/spy guy cozy mysteries. Maybe they aren’t any more exciting an investigation, but they also include Stevie, Win, Arkady (in plan limbo), and a little bat named Bellfry. Much more fun than a 50 year old living in her father’s retirement village trailer home and hanging out with the retirees there.
This series will not be further investigated by me.
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