Crystal Gardens [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

This is a new series for Amanda Quick and although the Arcane Society is not part of the storyline, it is easily a spinoff since the theme surrounds deep psychical powers of the Ladies of Lantern Street in Victorian era. If you're not a fan of Ms. Quick's arcane stories then this is not for you. If you do enjoy them, this story is one of Ms. Quick's better efforts and tells an enhchanting story with a decent mystery, light danger, and sweet and sensual romance, but through it all, it is very much like the rest of her novels.

Evangeline Ames has powerful psychic talents and works for an exclusive firm, Flint and Marsh, on Lantern Street, where she is hired out as a private investigator under the ruse of being a paid companion. She also dabbles on the side as an author writing serial romantic suspense stories. Many of the ton hire out her services to ensure their daughters are not being courted by fortune hunters and Evie is very good at her job, except her last assignment almost got her killed. Taking a break to spend more time on her writing, Evie rents a cottage in the country to get away from all the stress, only to find herself the target of another attempt on her life. As she flees from a killer, she runs to the mystical Crystal Gardens neighboring her cottage and straight into the enigmatic Lucas Sebastian.

Lucas Sebastian is a very misunderstood gentleman of the ton who carries a deep dark power. He's recently inherited his uncle's country estate and the enchanted gardens that go with it. Suspecting that his uncle's death was not merely a heart attack, Lucas moves to the Crystal Gardens to try and catch a killer, but he gets more than he bargained for when he meets Evangeline and realizes her life is in danger.

For the record, I gave the story 4 stars because I did, in fact, like it and if you're new to Amanda Quick, she's an excellent story teller with sensual romance and witty dialogue. Evangeline and Lucas are a great pair and have some really nice chemistry and work well together to take on murder, mystery and the most challenging of all, family matters. Lucas is one of her best written heroes in a while, but if you've read all of her books like I have, then you'll find they are all so similar that it's hard to distinguish one from the other. Rich, powerful hero who has a history of madness in the bloodline, check, adorably naive spinster heroine who's curious about passion, check. It's one thing when an author is churning out paperbacks, but these are annual releases at published prices over $25 and quite frankly, as much as I love her stories, it's not worth the value. If you can borrow this from a friend or the library, you won't be disappointed, but I wouldn't throw this into the pre-order pile and I can't see myself rereading it either.

I love the older Amanda Quick stories. A few years back I collected them and read them all. My favorites were Scandal, Mistress and Dangerous. The best part was the very cute heroines. They were more than just eccentric, they were funny! Even the men who loved them found them humorous. Evangeline is eccentric, but she isn't funny. Without the humor, the story seems a bit stale.

The paranormal aspect has been overdone, in my opinion. Everybody in this book seems to have some kind of psychic power. Even the plants. Even inanimate objects. Psychic power is everywhere. Which means it is no longer "paranormal" it is simply "normal". The cute dialog of the earlier books has been replaced with lengthy conversations about the same old thing -- who is using their paranormal powers to investigate what. It just didn't grab me the way her earlier books did.

Still, it's Amanda Quick, and she's awesome, so she deserves at least 3 stars, even if I didn't love this one.

First off, I will admit to being a big fan of Jayne Ann Krentz and all of her pseudonyms! This story I just really got into and enjoyed as we had a strong heroine, a strong hero, strong and funny and caring secondary characters and all of them involved in a murderous mystery!

Evangeline Ames was in bed asleep when she is woken by someone breaking into her cottage via the kitchen door. Good thing she is a think-ahead type of person so she immediately grabs her robe and slippers and opens her bedroom window -- squeak and all -- and even as she steps out the "burglar" is coming in her bedroom and threatening to kill her with the large knife he has. Evangeline runs as fast as she can and manages to stay ahead enough to get to a small entrance she had found to the abbey and Crystal Gardens. She is well aware of the "magical" dark mystery associated with the gardens and home but with her paranormal talents feels she will be safe and perhaps the killer after her she can trick into falling in a mysterious pond. As she runs and is closely pursued, she literally runs into the owner of Crystal Gardens, Lucas Sebastian and his assistant, Stone. Her would-be murderer runs into the maze trying to find her and that act is followed by horrible screaming until it stops.

Lucas escorts her home and orders Stone to keep watch on the cottage where Evangeline is living since she is renting from him. As the story proceeds we meet quite a few other characters such as Evangeline's maid Molly, her two friends, Beatrice and Clarissa, a bookseller, Irene, and the family of Lucas Sebastian include twins Beth and Tony and their mother Judith as well as Lucas' aunt Florence.

I don't want to give away any of the story but I just really loved the character development, the romance and the paranormal mystery and how Ms. Quick combined them all for a really enjoyable story! I read it in less than 12 hours. I just couldn't stop!