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REVIEW: In the Light of the Moon – R.D. Noland

In the Light of the Moon - R.D. Noland - A Gay Witch

Genre: Paranormal, Romance

LGBTQ+ Category: Gay

Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild

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About The Book

You can’t keep running from your past, especially when it has four legs and fangs. 

In the exciting second installment of Tales of a Gay Witch, we return to Jason and his friends six months later as they are coming to terms with the events of last year.

Jason thought he could move on with his life after Damien left in search of information about his mother, after finding out she might be alive after all, but is struggling to adjust to life without him.

He is persuaded to go out and meet up with his friends at his favorite night club 1470 West, where he meets a handsome young man named Mickey. That same night, Jason is informed by Detective Miller, now a good friend of his, to be on the lookout for Jo’s ex-husband Rex, who might be coming their way. There have been a number of sexual assaults and murders targeting young lesbian women up in northern Ohio, and Rex is suspected of being involved. Jo’s ex-husband was always a nasty, abusive piece of work, but to make things worse Rex is a werewolf and an alpha to boot.

It’s up to Jason to rally his friends again, he is tasked with protecting the people he cares about, before it’s too late…

The Review

Jason Wynwood is back, and R.D. Noland’s quirky, inelegant prose pulls us once more into the paranormal LGBTQ world of southern Ohio of the early 1980s, where our hero is living with his cousin, working as an assistant manager in a convenience store, and still grieving over his break-up with his half-vampire boyfriend Damien after six months. 

As worrisome rumors of a rogue werewolf pack send alarm signals through the paranormal community of greater Dayton, Jason meets Mickey Hawthorne, a local boy just a couple of years older than he is. Mickey seems like a normal kind of guy, living a quiet life in Ohio suburbia, trying to make his way into adulthood much in the same way Jason is. Mickey, however, is more complicated than he understands, and with the help of Jason and his friends, becomes an ally as well as a lover. 

It seems that the rogue werewolf is none other than the abusive ex-husband of Jo, Jason’s friend and boss. Determined to get back at his wife for leaving him and taking away their child, Rex poses a violent threat to the well-integrated and happy life Jason has made for himself. Using his powers as well as those of his friends, Jason plans to take care of the werewolf, even as he digs deeper into Mickey’s family secrets. 

Along with his messy writing, R.D. Noland seems to drag in plot devices on a whim and add them into the kitchen-sink mix as his story develops. Voiced through Jason and Mickey, the author’s earnestness and belief in the power of good is what makes these books both sweet and romantic. The reappearance in the last part of the book of Damien, the boy who broke Jason’s heart, adds a new complication—the idea that young LGBTQ folks need to approach relationships with open hearts and minds. It seems an odd idea to toss into the end of a second book in a series, but it actually sets up things for what will apparently be more books to come. 

The Reviewer

Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.

Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.

By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. 

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