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Review
Whoa, what a rush! I feel as if I’ve just come back from Downside. These books suck you right into a dirty, gritty world, like you’re experiencing it all yourself, and it’s absolutely incredible!
Book 5 in the Downside Ghosts series, Chasing Magic moves at a great pace, with the action revolving around tainted drugs and an army of ghost-infused junkie zombies. Yeah… really! Awesome 🙂 Chess is not working a case for the church, so the whole book focuses on her and Terrible working together to figure out the intricate mystery and get the bad guy. Throw into the mix a hit man after Terrible, an impending gang war and all of Chess’s issues, and it’s an intense ride.
Chess and Terrible are actually together in this book. Yep, for real. And it’s awesome!!! I love these two together!!!
Chess is still Chess and she’s still messed up. She’s a junkie, and she feels dirty and wrong, and completely underserving of Terrible and his love for her. But still she loves him passionately and completely.
She wasn’t going to lie and she wasn’t going to try to hide Terrible or who he was. She loved him and he was hers, and that made her so proud her chest hurt, and if anybody didn’t like it they could go fuck themselves.
However at the same time, she refers to herself as somebody who is “confused as hell about who they were, or scared as hell about who they were becoming – happy people”. And it’s heartbreaking watching her battle with all of the conflicting emotions she is feeling.
In addition to her relationship issues, Chess is also dealing with the fallout from her actions in a previous book “She’d really made the fuckup that kept on fucking up, hadn’t she?” The impact affects not just Terrible, but spreads into other areas of her life as she seeks help to fix the problem. My heart broke for her as she so willingly accepted blame and tried to deal with the guilt and the implications of it all.
And standing by her through it all is Terrible. God, I absolutely adore him, he is all kinds of awesome. His devotion to Chess is just amazing. He is also totally accepting of her and all of her demons and loves her unconditionally.
“Love you, Chessie,” he murmured. “Ain’t never … Fuckin love you, more’n anything.”
There is a strong focus on their relationship throughout the story. Working together, you get to see the respect, pride and absolute trust that they have for each other. But romantically, the two of them together hit a bit of a turning point, and I loved seeing them reach a new level of trust and intimacy in their relationship.
Lex now being in control of his deceased father’s territory also adds a bit of a twist to the story, and Lex actually surprised me with his ruthlessness…
I didn’t like some of his behaviour, but by the end of the book, I still couldn’t bring myself to completely hate him. I’m really interested to see where his story is going to go in future books.As always in these books, Stacia Kane absolutely rocks her finales, and this one is the best yet. The last 25% of the book is a constant rush. So much action, so much intensity – I was completely sucked into the world of drugs, magic and violence, and barely took a breath until it was all over.
But there were also both heart-warming and heart-breaking moments that had me in tears…
God, that big, tough guy can bring the swoon!What a freaking rollercoaster! Simply amazing, and I can’t wait for more.
Please see our Downside Ghosts page for more series info – including reading order, review and buy links.