Warning: If you haven’t read Don’t Date the Haunted or Don’t Marry the Cursed, please be aware that there are spoilers in this review.
C. Rae D’Arc’s third novel in her Haunted Romance series comes full circle. In the land of Novel established in the first book, the characters all live in “countries” denoted by literary genre. This is a playful idea that never wanes in ingenuity. The first novel in the series, Don’t Date the Haunted, tells the story of young Pansy Finster who escapes from her land of Horror in the first few chapters. She heads to Contemporary Romance to go to school. Charming and frightening, the first offering sets a high bar for the next two. Yet, the second one, set in Fantasy, meets that challenge and gives us dual points-of-view. So, how does book three fare?
After a prologue, Don’t Dance with Death starts in Fantasy with Pansy and Theo—her husband—living the high life. They’ve had a few years under their belt since Cursed, so the couple now have a son, a young boy learning the ropes of royalty. But all is not hearts and roses. Pansy worries about Theo’s distant nature and wonders if something’s wrong.
But they can’t start to resolve their marital problems as a kidnapping and a race out of Fantasy to Horror become the royal couple’s primary objective. The novel swiftly takes the reader to the land of Horror where the majority of this novel takes place.
Pansy and Theo must join with an unlikely ally and journey to Pansy’s home world. Everything is reversed from the first book in high callback fashion. In Date, Pansy often made a fool of herself living by Horror’s rules in Contemporary Romance. Now Pansy’s the sage; she’s the one who has the knowledge to keep them alive. As it turns out, the rules in Horror make it hard for Fantasy-born Theo to be the hero he is in his homeland.
Though her characters struggle to follow Horror’s maxims, the author doesn’t have the same problem as she follows the rules for a successful trilogy. It’s set up perfectly in the first two books for an exciting, climatic final book. This reviewer has a preference for trilogies in which each book can be read as a standalone, which this trilogy also achieves. Although more fun to start with book one, the third book can be appreciated on its own.
The setting of book three introduces us to only one area of Horror. Though a fascinating setting, a larger-scale chase across the landscape of Horror to learn of all its twisted towns would have added even more flavor. That said, the people, customs, and descriptions of Horror are fascinating. And little do the Fantasy heroes know that the “good people” can be just as dangerous as the bad.
Believable arcs exist for the main characters. Villains are appropriately snarly. And the creative touches I’ve come to expect in this series all exist in the third offering. It’s fast-paced, romantic, horrifying, and even a little gory at times. Despite this, Don’t Dance with Death has one scene at the end that is positively inspiring. Never would I have thought when starting the first book we would end up in such a place, but the narrative leads the reader there without compromising the integrity of the series.
Entertaining in all the best ways, Don’t Dance with Death is a silver bullet of a novel to read late at night. This book is a danse macabre that will have you begging for more.
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09HJCHSHK
Review of Don’t Date the Haunted
Review of Don’t Marry the Cursed
