Title: Strange Practice
Series: Dr. Greta Helsing #1
Author: Vivian Shaw
Summary: Greta Helsing inherited the family's highly specialized, and highly peculiar, medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills - vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although barely making ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta's been groomed for since childhood.
Score: ★★★☆☆
Review:A quaint and pleasant read on what it would be like if a helsing took care of monsters instead of hunting them. Set in present day London, murders suddenly being but for the humans and surprisingly the monsters of fiction (which are real). It is up to Greta Helsing, a doctor of the supernatural, and her powerful friends and unlikely acquaintances to get to the bottom of things, which may be bigger than they first think. The writing is simple, easy to follow, and over arching plot was interesting. There were not really and b-plots besides learning about 'the past' of characters/setting which it more or less directly came out and said/characters questioned. I did find myself able to set away and return from reading it in some slow parts but that didn't make it bad. Like side character groups being brought into the story and not mentioned until needed as a plot device for the mcs. There were a few deus ex machina events that while fine, more or less just happened to move the plot along or finish an event quicker. The romance seemed just fairly shoehorned in just to have it included, and didn't truly need it. Overall, it was a nice read and I may continue the series. - Recommend - If you enjoyed this book you will like The London Charismatics Series even more (or if you wanted more of something like TLC, then this will fill the void). It has a similar setting, supernatural in the sense of powers (instead of monsters), but with a better slowburn romance. - Misc - I listened to the audiobook version. It was slightly difficult to keep track of the characters/scenes as the scene breaks are not but a second of silence and some characters have unique names that go in and out of the story.
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