Two Bloggers One Series ~ The Precences by Heather Graham (Harrison Investigations #2)

 

Barb and I wasn't huge fans of book one of this series so it can only get better, right? Check out my review and then go see Barbs at Booker T's Farm.

The ultimate moneymaking plan...buy the ancient, run-down Scottish castle and turn it into a tourist destination. Toni Fraser and her friends will put on reenactments combining fact and fiction, local history, murder and an imaginary laird named Bruce MacNiall.

Just as someone arrives, claiming to actually be Laird MacNiall--a tall, dark, formidable Scot somehow familiar to Toni--the bodies of young women are found, dumped and forgotten in the nearby town.

But even stranger, how is it possible this laird exists? Toni invented Bruce MacNiall for the performance...yet sinister, lifelike dreams suggest he's connected to the recent deaths. Bruce claims he wants to help catch the murderer. But even if she wants to, can Toni trust him...when her visions seem to be coming from within the very eyes of the killer himself?

I am happy to report that I enjoyed this one a lot more than I did book one! I tell you after that rough start of not liking one of the characters I was a bit worried but I am glad the author just has made the characters in this one much more likable. 

So this one is set is Scotland which is great, and it has some American's who have rented out a castle and are doing historical tours with a reenactment of a Highland Laird storming into the castle to confront his wife about her possible infidility and what might have happened.

To their surprise a man on a stead comes barging into their reeactment demanding to know what they are doing in his home. He is Laird MacNiall and Toni the one who made up the story is not happy with the interuption and argues with him not putting her and her group on good terms with the man at first. Seems they got scammed and thought they had rented this castle but Bruce had no clue what was going on while he was gone. 

Meanwhile, there are some young women going missing in and around the area and Bruce actually found one of the bodies in his woods. He really doesn't like having these people in his home doing this reenactment but he also understand they invested a lot into what they had been doing, even fixing up some much needed repairs to the castle. 

As the investigation goes on Toni who can see the dead keeps getting lead into the woods where she finds one of Bruces ancestors, one of home she thought she made up. She was lead by the dead ancestoral Bruce and the present day Bruce is having a hard time grasping this and thinks she is a bit crazy. 

Now see I can understand one of the characters having some serious doubts about someone seeing ghost but this one guy wasn't near as bad about it as the guy in the first book. I actually like Bruce and Toni together they make a cute couple and not once did I feel that they shouldn't be together unlike the couple of book one. That couple does make an appearance towards the end and they seem a lot better than in their own book. I also really enjoyed the secondary characters. I figured out the bad person but the author did a good job of keeping me guessing between a couple of characters. 

I feel much better about heading into the next book in this series than I did after book one. :)

4 stars