Fiction Friday #1

(To serve as kind of the counter-point of Music Monday, every other Friday will be Fiction Friday, where I’ll post about fictional works that I’ve enjoyed and which I want to share with everyone!)

Clean Sweep

From Amazon.com: On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is…different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, “normal” is a bit of a stretch for Dina.

And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night….Feeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans—an alpha-strain werewolf—and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.

Why I recommend it: It’s a very charming story that spends a good deal of time on fascinating world-building and uses one of my favorite fantasy/supernatural tropes, the interdimensional innkeeper. I could hardly put the book down, and I can’t wait to return to the setting with the next installment in the series.