Iron Canuck Reviews & More: Review Tour: The Shadow Collector: Natalya and Owen (Shadow Valley #1) by Bonnie Randall with an excerpt, a giveaway, and my review

THE SHADOW COLLECTOR

by Bonnie Randall

GENRE: Psychic Thriller/Ghost Thriller

BLURB:

HAVEN'T YOU WONDERED?

Undercover, on skid row . . .

Owen Brophy, summoned by a street psychic, is alarmed when she knows his real name—and unnerved by her obstinate question: "Who did you abandon back home?" Home. The Okanagan Valley. Owen hasn't been there since he was a kid. Hasn't seen his oldest friend—a guy he once loved like a brother, a man he's long been estranged from—in years. Yet the psychic forecasts an ominous collision: past will crash against present when his old buddy exhumes a long-concealed secret—a secret more than one person has died for. A secret someone will kill to keep hidden.

OR MAYBE YOU KNOW

Unannounced, at her door . . .

A grisly package arrives for Natalya Nikoslav, its cryptic verse clearly written by someone who knows her history something she, abandoned as a toddler, has never been able to unearth on her own. Shaken, Natalya scours her psychic shadows to see where this package has come from. She's shocked by what she sees: her tombstone. Its death date waxes and wanes alongside an enigmatic spectre, a man she almost—almost!—recognizes, begging for her help. A retrocognitive, Natalya knows her psychic shadows are limited to the past . . . yet this man is unmistakably calling out from her future. And he's frantic—they'll both die if she doesn't come home.

But . . . where is home? Who is he?

And when she finds him will she know . . .

WHERE DID ALL THE CHILDREN GO?

EXCERPT:

East Hastings & Main, Vancouver, British Columbia

Owen Brophy crept down the alley, silently navigating around puddles— some blackened like oil slicks in the darkness, others gilded by the amber glow of Hastings streetlights. All reeking; stagnant rainwater. Piss. “Gretel?” His hushed shout drifted over all the bags and rags slumped in the alley; people, covered by or covering their worldly possessions. “Gretel?”

“Shut it!” hissed someone, but then another voice, a rasp that sounded the way rusty barbed wire looked, said, “That you, Boss?” There, beyond her usual haunt, crouched Gretel, an emaciated husk framed by sprays of graffiti, looped shapes and sharp angles in the night. Like The Louvre if it shot up a speedball, Owen mused, and sprinted to her, feet practiced enough to dodge the puddles and floating needles without needing to look. “How come you’re not in your doorway?” he whispered.

“’Cause I wanted a vacation?” Gretel’s wrinkles were crevassed in the dim light, tiny sunbursts around the corners of her eyes. In the murk Owen could see the crater of an abscess in her front tooth.

She reached up, hid it with her hand. “Gave my doorway to Albert.” One wasted shoulder angled toward a heap of rags in her jamb. “He gots the grippe. Won’t last long.”

What wouldn’t last long—the grippe? Or Albert? Owen was versed enough in Gretel-speak to know the grippe was pneumonia (the most oft-visiting Grim Reaper of the heroin crowd), and that most of the predictions she made down here on skid row came true. “You tell the street doc about Albert?” he asked.

She jacked a brow over the eye that had finally gone opaque from cataract just over a year ago. “You knows I don’t talk to no street doc.” ‘Street doc’, spat out as if it tasted like her tooth. “You got the stuff?” She splayed a hand.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Bonnie Randall, author of Divinity & The Python and Within The Summit's Shadow, writes stories that explore what love looks like in the face of paranormal peril. She lives in Western Canada where she is hard at work on the next two novels in the Shadow Valley series.

Website: https://www.bonnierandallstories.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063601869120

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shadowvalleystories

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Collector-Natalya-Owen-ebook/dp/B0C4G7XGXN/ref=sr_1_1

Free on KU

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GIVEAWAY

The author will award a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4638/

My Review - 4 1/2 of 5 stars -

4 1/2 stars. This book was hard for me to rate. There were points when I said this is four stars. Then there were parts that I did not want to stop reading. I enjoyed the characters. Natalya was stronger than she seemed. I loved how she had support even when she didn't think so. Her past was shrouded in secrets and, as memories returned and secrets revealed, she continued to try to help Rob. Owen was also trying to help Rob and distrusted Natalya at first. There were plenty of surprises along the way, and I enjoyed the journey. A very satisfactory ending as well.