Review: Wight Mischief by JL Merrow

I'd been looking forward to this new release by JL Merrow for a while. I'm a huge fan of her writing and have pretty much read everything she's published so far (except the shifter books because they're not really my thing). I was particularly attracted to the Isle of Wight setting because, although I've never been, I've heard quite a lot about what a charming and beautiful place it is.

The story begins with two best friends, Will and Baz, arriving on the Isle of Wight for a camping holiday/opportunity for research as Baz is wanting to write a book about ghost sightings on the island. Baz isn't a huge fan of camping but he's humouring Will, and things get off to a pretty good start when two attractive girls happen to be camping on their site - well it's a pretty good start for Baz who quickly hooks up with one of the girls, leaving poor Will to fume silently about being left out in the cold, literally. Will heads off for a walk and accidentally trespasses on private land where he sees a pale ghostly figure disappearing into the sea. It turns out not to be a ghost but rather elusive author Marcus whose grisly past forces him to keep away from everyone. When Baz gets permission to speak to Marcus over the ghosts on his property, Will sees his error and spends the rest of the book trying to get to know Marcus better. However, ghosts, suspicious accidents and over-bearing guardians all get in their way.

I'm going to start with what I didn't like about the book. Firstly, Baz. I really didn't like him too much and in my opinion he had far too much page time devoted to him. My main annoyance with him was the way he treated Will, who was just a lovely man. One minute Baz was being all pally and nice to Will and the next he would lash out in a sarcastic way, or put Will down, or just be plain nasty to him for no real reason, or lead him on with sexual suggestions only to then dump him for a woman. I spent most of the book wondering why Will puts up with him and it actually reflected badly on Will as a character that he allowed Baz to walk all over him, take advantage of his good nature, or that he believed the lies that Baz tells him. In fact my favourite scene between Will and Baz is when Will finally stands up for himself and walks out on Baz. The majority of the story is taken up with Baz and Will's travels around the island as Baz supposedly visits places of ghostly interest. It's not difficult to see that this is just a cover for something else, and again it annoyed me that Will doesn't question Baz about this. In contrast the page time between Will and Marcus is much less and really for the romance to have worked better for me I would have liked to have seen more of Will and Marcus together and less of Will and Baz. Towards the end of the book the focus does shift better towards Will and Marcus, and Baz seems to fade out the book somewhat, although that was too little too late for me as a reader.

I'm going to be a bit spoilerish now so skip this next paragraph if it bothers you.

My other gripe was about the portrayal of Marcus' guardian. This is partly because I have a severe dislike of any villainous character who holds absolute power over one of the heroes, which was definitely the case with Leif. It was also because he turned into a huge caricature moustache twirling villain. The whole 'if I can't have Marcus and his money then no-one can!' showdown was rather far-fetched as was his frankly ridiculous attempts to kill off Will and Baz for no sane reason.

There was still much to like about the book, despite some of my negative feelings. I really liked Will. He's gentle and unassuming, always willing to go the extra mile and genuinely caring about other people. He's hardly met Marcus before he decides that Marcus needs his help and protection, and so sets about trying to make Marcus' life better. Admittedly some of that is due to lust too, and his internal musings about Marcus' body made me smile. Marcus too was a character that worked for me. His albinism was an unusual feature and I thought that was handled both realistically and sensitively in the story. The two men have a sort of hurt/comfort relationship which, I have to admit, is a bit of a favourite of mine and so I liked the way their different attributes complemented each other. I just wish there had been more page time devoted to their romance without the annoyance of Baz or Leif to muddy their relationship.

Another part which worked really well was the setting of the Isle of Wight. Baz and Will spend much of the book driving all over the island and visiting various places of interest. It really gave me a great flavour of what the island is like, whilst also showing the obvious affection that the author has for the place. I love it when a book is so firmly grounded in place and this was a definite positive feature of this book for me.

Overall, as you can see, I had a bit of a mixed response to this book. On one hand I really liked the setting and the characters of Will and Marcus, and thought their romance was quite lovely. On the other hand the characters of Baz and Leif didn't work for me and as such I got annoyed at how much the story seemed to focus on them and not on the romantic couple together. This book is still worth reading though, and it gets a grade of 'Good'.

Buy this book HERE.