A review by roxsannel
Carnival of Shadows by Leslie Scott

5.0

Teagan Blackwater is a young woman with extraordinary power, she is still reeling from the loss of her grandmother and the reality that it was her mother who killed her, she is finding the house too quiet and the routine impossible to settle into, not to mention keeping her young teenage friend out of trouble and running the trailer park in Firewater Springs she has inherited. Thankfully, she has her friends to help her out and keep her grounded, that is until a Carnival rolls into town and starts to disrupt the tenuous control she has over herself.

Talking of her teenage neighbour, she has a slight problem, her teenage hormones have gotten the best of her and she has managed to do something a little drastic when her current flavour of the month was moving too fast for her liking, it is easily sorted out, but the revelation which comes with it is less appealing. The cover up is a bit easier, a local police officer turns up after getting a call about a drunken teenager, however, after his vest camera is turned off, he asks for the truth of the matter, and when Teagan tells him some of the truth, he understand that things are not as they seem around there, that could be because he is one of those something else's, he exudes a certain power which can only mean one thing, he is supernatural as well and he is smoking hot too! When he leaves, after asking Teagan on a date, he throws in that the MC club nearby is looking a bit too quiet and that maybe Teagan should go check it out seeing as she used to date one of them and owes a favour to another, however, when she gets there, things are definitely not good, she gets the feeling that she shouldn't be there and that she also isn't wanted there and she knows this means that when demi-demons are worries, that something is terribly wrong.

After this experience, she decides to ask the local hottie cop to meet her to talk about what she has just seen and heard and so she decides to go to a local watering hole to try and steady her nerves and meet him there to kill two birds with one stone, however, things don't go to plan when she is given another warning by a set of supernatural twins and then is party to a show of the powers the Circus contains. This power is nothing she has seen before and it is so strong that everyone around her is affected by it, apart from her and the cop, their combined influence keeps them safe, but also opens them up to something even more dangerous, each other, especially when an ex brings out the testosterone in the group.

While Teagan and her friends come up with a plan to defeat this Circus of Shadows, Teagan is more and more drawn to the cop and asks him for help investigating the Carnival and the paranormal freakshow it contains, but when they find out who is behind it and what they are after, life becomes even more dangerous and complicated than it already is. Will Teagan and her friends be able to defeat the Carnival before Firewater Springs succumbs to its demands, or will the place they love fall into the clutches of the Shadows surrounding them? This is a paranormal romance with plenty of supernatural action which will pull you along with the investigation and have you rooting for Teagan and the others all the way to its conclusion, but to find out how it ends, you have to read it to believe it.