Isabella Thornton is a young woman with a mysterious past who works as the department head of the ISA (Institute of Scientific Anomalies). She is currently on a much needed leave to begin writing a book about many of her unusual encounters concerning the unexplained phenomena. Isabella has chosen to to reside in a quiet small town in Michigan, a few hours from the Institute where she is hoping to enjoy a quiet and well deserved time off to recover from her last case where she almost died and she is still emotionally fragile from that encounter. The sheriff and the mayor show up unexpectedly at her door one morning seeking her advice on several reoccurring attacks on farm animals that are starting to shake up the community since the killings have left the sheriff and the farmers stumped because the animals had large fang marks on their bodies and had been completely drained of blood. Isabella feels it's not a case of the supernatural but more likely a large wolf, cougar or many of the possible large.wildlife in the area but she agrees to help them investigate the matter to put the town at ease.

Soon after, Isabella becomes involved with a murder of a colleague (not paranormal) while researching the animal
attacks and finds they're somehow connected. So now there are two killers on the loose and she is in right in the middle and will find that she is possibly a target of one of the killers but doesn't know why and in the.meantime she is being stalked by the other killer. Why, oh why did she ever believe that she could find peace and quiet for herself since she understands that her entire life has never been normal and unfortunately it never will be.

This was a very enjoyable and entertaining book for me. Initially, I thought it was going to be a very dark and sinister story but I found it to be lighter yet still having a good grip on the paranormal as well as the supernatural. The main character Isabella is wonderful. She is lovely, feisty and a believable solid character to have built the book around. This novella was quite a pleasant surprise and had a lot going on yet the author "Debi Chestnut" used her talent to write a story that was easy to understand and the action packed pages were fun, creepy, and scary at times. There was some romance especially in the second half of the story where it was fine to a point but sometimes I just wanted more scare and strange happenings instead of hugs and kisses. I feel that the
romance will appeal to many readers who enjoy romantic/suspense books. So in all-in-all it was an entertaining and solid story with great characters and the book seemed to end with the possibility of a stand-alone series (hopefully) in the near future!

Trigger Warnings: Some graphic descriptions of animal killings.
This book does deal with supernatural events as in evil, spirits, demons, entities etc.

I want to thank the publisher "BooksGoSocial" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this novella and any thoughts or opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I highly recommend this well-written book and have.given a rating of 4 SPOOKY, SUPERNATURAL🌟🌟🌟🌟 STARS!!
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NetGalley ARC Educator 550974

A one sitting read. Izabela is a paranormal investigator who wants a quiet life. Artifacts are stolen and animals are being drained of their blood. There's a bit of mystery, paranormal activity and romance. What's not to love? The animal maulings are graphic so beware. I hope to read more of Izabela's adventures.

#netgalley #Erebus
Thanks to netgalley, BooksGoSocial and Debi Chestnut for sending this ARC e-book for review.
Professor Winthrop, an Archeologist at Morgans Cross University is studying the strange multilation of livestock in the area, possibly connected to a skeleton found on the University grounds. When the Professor is murdered and and relics are stolen, Izabela Thornton, a specialist in psychometry at the ISA ( Institute of Scientific Anomalies) takes a leave of absense to help the Sheriff and Alexis to find the killer.
This is an engaging and fast-paced story of hell hounds, psychic ability, magic rings and a mysterious murder. I fell right into this book, and loved the pace of the story. The characters could use some fleshing out, but this seems like it may be a first in a series, and that may be why. This was an excellent book, and I would definitely recommend it.

I really enjoyed the storyline of this book, combining fantasy with mystery in a modern setting. I particularly enjoyed that any of the fantasy aspects are different that the common types we're seeing a lot of lately, making it unique in that aspect.

It kept me interested throughout the whole book, never lagging or feeling like it was moving too slowly. I enjoyed the characters and learning glimpses of their pasts while watching the relationships develop.

Admittedly the writing style was not exactly to my tastes but I can also see how the author may have been channeling the protagonist's own way of speaking.

Thanks to Cayelle Publishing and Net Galley for this ARC. This is my honest, unbiased review.

We started out strong here. I wish we had stayed that way. This book has so much potential and genuinely interesting characters but it fails to follow through. Over all I enjoyed the beginning.

Mystical artifacts, psychic investigation, small towns, and maybe finding a new home, irregardless of those poor social skills and bad decisions! All ads to a quick read, some mindless fun for a weekend or the beach.

The start of the story really pulled me in, i could tell i would love the plot. On the other hand by the middle it felt stunted and predictable. Quick and easy read.

This is a hard review for me because i enjoyed parts of this book, but it also had issues for me. The writing was good but th eplot fell flat and felt predictable, it also felt like the author would get so far into the plot and then just decide to leave it where it is. It was ok but could have been better.

2.5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was very different from others that I've read. I hope that there will be more in this series..
I recommend this book. This review was given freely and honestly from Netgalley.

SPOILERS! BEWARE!

I'm going to give this 2.5 star rating out of 5. I did really enjoy a lot of the writing style in this one and the plot ideas were interesting, if poorly executed. The whole story seems to take about a week or so. At the beginning when the Mayor, Sheriff and Professor show up, Izabela asks for a few days to think about it before join the search on what type of animal has been killing livestock in the area, but she seems to immediately start investigating that day and every time someone ask for a day or so they get back to her with full details only a few hours later with no mention of her or them getting something done faster than expected. I think the murder of the professor should have been the thing that spurred Izabela into agreeing to look into the hellhound instead of the weird jump where she's all let me think about it and just starts doing the investigation right that afternoon. Also after the initial meeting the mayor is no longer involved in the story past the back story of Sheriff Matt's lovelife issues.
This story seemed to have three major plotlines: the appears and terroization of the town's livestock by a hellhound, the murder of the professor that originally wanted to hire Izabela for the hellhound along with his missing relics and Izabela dealing with a demon that attacked her before the main story. There might have been too many threads because if she was focusing on one then she seemed to completely forget about the others or they become after thought though it's kind of important. Like when she's worried that the killer is after but let's forget about that while we deal with this demon. The hellhound attacked every two days once that was established and they went out and found it on the second night, it seemed like no one cared about the hellhound feeding anymore, no other livestock was said to have been attacked after that and no one in town asked about it anymore even though it was still a threat she was dealing with. At one point she even berates herself for not focusing on solving the murder which isn't even her job, she was supposed to be looking into the hellhound, sure they are connected but it’s not her job to worry about solving it.
There were a few times where the narration moved to Sheriff Matt, that I believe should have been used more, it was used at least twice and one of those times ended up switching focus back to Izabela abruptly. The whole relationship between Izabela and Matt seemed weird. There wasn't any overt indication when they first met that there was this undeniable attraction, seriously it was strange how they went from Izabela worried she messed up their first date which was supposed to be a work dinner about the hellhound to Matt saying he's her boyfriend not even three days later. Oh, and when they supposedly first slept together, the chapter was so vague about it, I was having a hard time following what happened, I seriously just thought she asked him to stay and they fall asleep on the couch together because there was no mention of moving into the bedroom and I really only got it because she was worried it would be awkward which I think is really against the character. Another thing when it comes to Matt, Izabela makes a big deal about opening her own car door as she doesn't need a man *hard eyeroll* clearly she doesn't understand the importance of letting a guy open a door for you and only reluctantly lets him do it for her later on again making an internal comment against it, but when he offers to pick up dinner for her which I believe is in the same vain as opening a door which is doing something nice, she like praises him for being such a great man. She really can't have it both ways.

I wish the murder was a little different. Izabela narrows down the suspects to three guys without much explanation of the reason why it has to be one of these three guys. I was actually hoping it was done by her neighbor/friend Kathy as Kathy seemed to show up and help her do research on what was going on and seemed very interested in the fact that Izabela knew where the relics were. She helped her researched the hellhound and read that they leave smoking footprints and walk with flaming feet and that wasn't mentioned in the story until after she read that. It seriously made me think that maybe Kathy was somehow involved with the hellhound and later with the missing relics. Kathy is MIA through most of the book as she ditches Izabela after being scared off by Izabela's supernatural involvement but coming back after hearing the rumor about the relics. I just think that would have been a better twist than the killer in the book.

I got the advanced copy of this on Netgalley. It was still in need of a few more rounds of editing before it's published but based on the copy I got I would recommend this to fantasy and mystery fans. Overall it a simple read that could be enjoyable to read.

This will be published on https://onelookreview.blogspot.com/ on 6/21/22

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC.

This book had some of the makings of a really good read, but unfortunately never quite got there.

The world building was problematic, lacking clarity. It was uncertain who had knowledge of and belief in the supernatural. The MC, herself, despite having some supernatural powers and working for an agency dealing with the paranormal, had difficulty believing paranormal aspects that were new to her.

The plot was predictable and the characters fell flat. I realize I read an ARC, but there were blatant grammatical errors.

A quick but uninteresting read.