Review of The Stalking Dead (Gang of Ghouls #1)

Blurb: Kinda dead. Straight-up psycho. Totally obsessed with her.

I did a bad, bad thing.

Thanks to a blank in my memory, I'm not sure what that thing was, but it was horrible enough to get me locked up in the mental ward for seven years. Horrible enough that my little sister won't even speak to me.

But when I'm released back into a town determined to rub my unknown sins in my face, the past isn't the only thing that's haunting me. The four "imaginary" friends who made my childhood bearable barge into my life in a very real way.

They're crude, criminally inclined, and more than a little unstable after ages trapped in afterlife limbo. All they want is to protect me. Worship me. Avenge me.

So they'll bludgeon, maim, eviscerate—tear a strip of havoc right through this sleepy town.

Even rise from the dead.

Maybe I'm still not all that sane either, because part of me finds them strangely appealing. In ways very different from how I felt as a kid. And that's not the only strangeness stirring inside me...

I promised myself I'd stick to the straight and narrow from here on. But what if the only way to set things right is to get a little ghoulish?

Review: Lily was put away in a mental institution for seven years for something she can't remember. Now she's returned to her hometown to redeem herself and be there for her little sister. Yet the townspeople won't let her forget she went crazy. It doesn't help that the four "imaginary" friends she had as a child have come back and found hot bodies to inhabit. They're violently fervent about protecting her, and it's not just regular town bullies that they need to worry about. Something deeper and darker is happening, and the gang has stumbled upon it.

This is the first book in the thrilling reverse harem paranormal romance series, Gang of Ghouls. The premise of this is unlike anything I've read before. The men are dead gangsters (biker gang, really) who were Lily's friends after she nearly drowns in a marsh as a child. They murder and possess four men from the college she's attending. Not just any men, but men who have viciously bullied Lily. With no remorse, they kill the men and steal their bodies which eventually start to change to be more like how the gang originally looked. (I do not question ghoul magic!) They guys seek not only to help her, but to get their clubhouse back. They are incredibly violent and don't seem to have any trouble with the cops for some reason, which doesn't make sense, but I guess they chose their host bodies well. Nox, Ruin, Jett, and Kai are four very different men who are all falling for Lily and she's falling fast for them. Only a couple of steamy scenes, but a whole lot of over the top bullying and violence. Lily is trying very hard to not make waves because she wants to see her sister again, but no one is letting her just live a quiet life. She passively takes the horrendous bullying and never reports it, which did bother me. She also discovers she may have some sort of magic that she got from her near death experience, and the ghouls have magic too. There's an underlying dark story happening centered around Lily and her sister, a big conspiracy that has to do with the owner of a big company in the next town over. There's a few hints of what that might be, and I'm curious to see where the series will take us.

You can find Eva Chase on her site and buy the book here.