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?

So, I started reading this on a Tuesday. Or should I say, rereading because it turns out I already had the first book in the series on my kindle but I seemed to have only read 10% of it and then left it to rot with all the other unread books in my kindle library.

This time I got the ‘box set’ of the books. I suppose you could say that I am ‘making my way through’ Eva Chase’s books. Kind of like I’m doing with Stephen King.

Anyway, I came to the end of reading this on my lunch break on Wednesday. I actually almost missed the ending because I was wrapped up in what was happening. I had to stop myself from continuing the read into the second book and make time to write this review with fresh thoughts.

So, the book follows Lily, a woman who has spent the past 7 years in an asylum for an incident she has no memory of. She has returned to her hometown to complete collage and to be closer to the sister she raised before she was carted off. It’s very clear from the beginning that the people of her hometown have not forgotten her and do not welcome her return.

Everyone treats her like dirt, like a common criminal, and they aren’t pleasant with their words or actions. There are 4 male characters who stand out as the worst bullies, but they don’t remain bullies for long!

Turns out that Lily had four spirits watching over her and when she returned to her hometown, they decided they needed to do more to protect her. So, the experimented, and in their experiment, they managed to get themselves human bodies, the 4 bodies of those characters who were bullying Lily.

We learn, the 4 character’s names are – Nox (the leader), Ruin (the happy-go-lucky), Kai (the intellect), and Jett (the artist). They have a more violent way of expressing their displeasure over how Lily has been treated. And at first she is not happy with their interference into her life but as she comes to terms and acceptance of who they are and why they have decided to devote themselves to her, she begins to become more receptive of how she can stand up for herself, how she can get what she wants, and how she can uncover the truth of what happened 7 years ago.

Of course, these four men are devilishly handsome and make Lily feel all sorts of emotions. They are possessively devoted to her but it is clear through their interactions as a group and also the individual perspectives that the devotion and love they have for her is incredibly strong and they mean every word they say in terms of their feelings and their need to protect her.

Lily also holds secrets, secrets she’s not even aware of but that do work their way to the surface in this book – briefly, I’ll admit – but sure to become more frequent through the series.

I think there are 4 books in the series, as a box set on kindle it’s 1,004 pages.