Three of Swords (1) - J.D. Bretton

Published in 2016 and written by American author J.D. Bretton.

Danielle is looking forward to her next vacation as she plans to spend some quality time with her husband Matt, and renew their relationship that has recently passed through the sad experience of loosing their unborn baby. All she wants to do is to get over it and pull herself back together again; however the process has proven to be excessively hard to be achieved.

As the last straw, an unexpected incident added more salt to her wound when they attend a friend's party just to come across another couple who is celebrating their first pregnancy. Pain turns out to be too much for Danielle to cope with so she soon breaks down and leaves the party, heartbroken. 

My rate:


As time goes by distance between husband and wife grows further, and during Matt's absence a ghost named Xavier Hawthorne, former home resident, visits Danielle and comforts her in her loneliness. With time they find things in common; both share a deep sorrow and they're frantically in need of someone's understanding and company. He then becomes the partner she's longed for and a great sexual companion she won't definitely turn away. On the other side Xavier has his own requirements and urgencies so he asks for Danielle's help to sort things out in his life before is too late. 

This pretty much short book (60 p. approx.) has great content; you'll find a quite entertaining story developed in its pages, which includes a lot of suspense, love, mourn and explicit sex. Considering its length I think this story has a lot to offer to a fair range of readers, a plot that will hook you up soon after reading the first pages, so no chance to get bored.

Danielle's great tragedy is that she hasn't been able to fulfill her dream of becoming a mother, being this experience her third loss, and to top the whole thing up her husband is getting tired of her incessant grieving. It seems that she is trapped in a hole she can't go out of, so you certainly pity her; nonetheless as pages pass by that obsession makes the character somehow dull and repetitive. 

Anyway, there's nothing so painful that good sex cannot fix, if only for a while in Danielle's life. The ephemeral antidote gives both Danielle and Xavier the relief they so desperately search for. What impresses me though, is the fact that despite of her deep sadness she can easily switch from desolation to sexual arousal in a matter of minutes! Her capacity to push away all sorrow from her mind makes me wish that would work that well for me too. This feature reminds me somehow of that of comedy-horror movies in which characters go from fright to laugh so quickly that I kind of feel I've missed something, therefore I'm personally not very fond of this type of sequence. On the other side if you're a fan of steaming sexual episodes this is your book! Scenes are described with such realism that you won't want to miss them out.

My favorite part of the book is no doubt the suspense the author confers to her work, the way Xavier approaches Danielle evokes a combination of apprehension and romance at once. There's a kind of gothic aura in his appearance and demeanor that makes you feel attracted and cautious at the same time. My top-notch scene is when Xavier tries to reveal himself to his brother in order to tell him what really happened to him.

Behind that dark guise there's the touching drama of a true sufferer, someone who struggles to fix things around; I wonder if Danielle's ever realized how fortunate she is in comparison. I'm willing to read part II and get to know how circumstances end up for Xavier and what the future holds for both of them. Will somebody else be able to see or sense Xavier's presence? Will more characters become ghosts too? What a thrill!