Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Drawn by promises of excitement and freedom, how could Callum resist Berlin?

It's the end of 1932 and the Weimar capital is the heartbeat of the gay world, where a man like him can find companionship and love, even in the shadow of looming political disaster.

Still, Callum feels unseen, until he discovers a place where the dead mix with the living, an organization devoted to studying the supernatural, and a man in each world that could capture his heart... or seal his fate.

Haunted Hearts – Everyone deserves a happy ever afterlife!

Book Review

I enjoyed the creativity of this new-to-me author whose plot twists often had my head spinning and my eyes virtually glued to the page so I wouldn’t miss a detail. However, I have to admit that the setup was difficult for me to comprehend at first. There’s so much going on in this tale of a young Brit who comes to Germany to shake off his boring life and enjoy the freedom of being gay in Berlin. It’s 1932 when he and his friend Anne arrive so the political stage is being set for a Nazi takeover, but this takes place before war is imminent and the only “brownshirts” we see are fulfilling a different role in the nightclubs. The country is still feeling economic effects from “the Great War” which took the lives of many young German men, some of whom, now ghosts, play a role in this tale. The author uses quite a bit of German dialogue so between taxing my brain to recall high school German classes and stretching my imagination to include the ghosts and the possibility that Callum may be something more than human, it took me a bit of time to get into the flow of the story.

 

Callum is indeed more than human as both he and readers learn. He’s a ghost walker, both ghost and human, hence geist fleisch. He’s able to enter a doorway from this world to another, one populated by young gay men who were killed during the war. With the help of a young man from 1932, who is studying the phenomena of a ghostly world intersecting with the human one, he’s able to cross over, but in an effort to help those ghosts, he accidentally causes them harm and he’s booted back out to the human realm. Throughout the story he passes back and forth a few times as he’s fallen in love with Max, one of the ghosts from the past, but he can’t find a solution for them to be together. Max does come to his aid in the human realm at one point when he needs it most and the brownshirts are threatening to exterminate him. There’s just so much to this story as it’s not a simple tale by any means, and Callum is not a simple man on a simple journey.

 

There’s plenty of horror and blood and gore as well as other-worldly beings like vampires and monsters from beyond the veil. Readers who like a thriller should enjoy this story. Unfortunately for those who love a romantic HEA, this book does not have that. We have Callum living a satisfying and long life but there’s no one partner to march off into the sunset with him. To be honest, that wouldn’t fit with this story as written, and the ending readers are treated to is just right for Callum.

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book was provided by the author for the purpose of a review.

 

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novella, 176 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	27-September-2024
Price	$3.99 ebook, $13.99 paperback
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Geist-Fleisch-Christian-Baines-ebook/dp/B0D77696QK