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Book Review: Elemental by K.L. Noone

Last updated on March 22, 2020

Author blurb:

Daniel Rose should be having a good night. He’s a bestselling author; he’s had film adaptations of his books; he’s met movie stars. And there’s a storm outside tonight, electric and wild. Dan’s always liked storms.

Tonight, though, he’s stuck staring at his computer and suffering from writer’s block, out of ideas and inspiration. But when an adorable young man knocks at his door, asks to borrow Dan’s kitchen spices, and announces witchcraft’s real and their apartment building needs an exorcism, Dan’s dark and stormy night takes a turn for the magical.

Sterling Friday’s among the youngest qualified practicing members of the coven, and this haunted building’s only his third assignment. He’s a very good clairvoyant but less good at proper spellwork, and he could use some help with both ingredients and psychic anchors.

He also happens to be a fan of those Daniel Rose novels, and he’s hoping Dan, as a writer, will believe his story and not turn him away. On a night drenched in magic and rain, as ghosts hover in the background, the attraction between them is immediate and elemental.

Look at that cover. It’s gorgeous. When Elemental popped up in my Amazon recommendation list, the cover made me notice the book and the title made me click. But a book is more than a cover and a title, so we’ll continue.

There are lots of things to talk about in this bite-sized bit of lyrical text. So many things. But some of them are spoilers, so I’ll limit myself a bit.

The book as a whole is so incredibly interesting. I honestly wasn’t sure what to do with it at first. The elaborate writing style Noone chose surprised me. It wasn’t what I was expecting from the blurb I read. It made me a little cautious, because I thought it might become overdone and cheesy. Especially when I noticed that the syntax was inconsistent. It alternated between the expected, more standard tone and the more poetic, hyper-descriptive style.

And then I realized that the rain was my favorite character.

I don’t know for sure if that’s what she was trying to do. But for me, the end effect of all that gloriously descriptive, almost overblown (but not quite), gothic-textured prose was that everything she described with it became a character.

Like here: A knock bounced off his front door. Rattled through the apartment and down his spine. Startled both him and the rain.

Or here: The rain decided this was hysterical. Got noisier, chattering away.

It shouldn’t work. The juxtaposition of the two blatantly different styles shouldn’t work. The piles of sentence fragments all over the place shouldn’t work.

It totally worked.

And then in the middle of all this fantastically weird writing, there’s a really cute romance. Dan and Sterling are our only human characters. Dan is our point of view, and we watch Sterling and everything that happens through his somewhat incredulous but totally smitten eyes. And we can see why he’s smitten. Sterling is both adorable and badass.

There’s lots of sweetness, some really interesting fantasy elements, and pretty much no angst. There is some cute fumbling, a light tease of BDSM, and a ghost puppy. Noone leaves us with a surprisingly satisfying “happily for now” ending.

If you’re looking for a quick afternoon read of the interesting and sweet variety, this one is a gem. I picked it up on Amazon for about $2.50. Totally worth every penny. A little poking found a sequel about Sterling’s sister that I’ll definitely pick up later. I also realized that another series I read and liked a few months ago, Kitten and Witch, was written by K.L. Noone as well. So far, I highly recommend this author.

Buy Links

Amazon I Publisher

K.L. Noone’s Website

Published inBook Recommendations

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