Review--A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder by Victoria Laurie

A museum is hosting an exhibit of supernatural artefacts in honour of the Ghoul Getters' new film. Unfortunately, Gilley - engaged with wedding plans - donated a dagger which keeps the demon Oruc locked in the lower realm. Before M.J. can recover the bewitched blade, there is a murder and a heist at the museum and the dagger is stolen. Now Oruc and other formerly vanquished demons are suddenly causing mayhem. The Ghoul Getters are in for a devil of a time, rounding them up before these paranormal party crashers turn Gilley's wedding bells to funeral knells. 

It’s always a bittersweet feeling when you go into a book knowing it’s the last one of its series. I’ve been a longtime fan of Victoria Laurie! She was the first author I read in the genre I would dub as Paranormal Mystery or Cozy Paranormal Mystery, because they are Cozy Mysteries! The Ghost Hunter Mystery series became a fast favorite, because GHOSTS!! And mystery of course! A Ghoul’s Guide to Love and Murder is the final mystery of M.J., Gilley, and Heath and I am sad to see them go!

Things have been busy for M.J. First she and Heath just got back from an epic vacation only to find the crazy chaos that was waiting for them. Gilley had lent a very powerful dagger to a museum that was showcasing all the Ghoul Getters gear for the upcoming movie premiere that tells of their harrowing journey battling the Grim Widow. Since this is the very powerful dagger that acted as a gateway to letting in a super creepy ghost and his pet demon, M.J. has always kept it locked away but when she hears that Gilley lent it out all willy nilly, she is determined to get it back before the ghost or its demon break free. And that, naturally, is when the dagger is stolen!

I’ve had a deep love for this series ever since I started it wayyy back at the beginning. I remember always saving these mysteries for a day off because I was always able to devour them in one day. Sadly, that hasn’t happened in a while what with working full time now, but I still enjoy them all the same! This final one was absolutely amazing! It was like a throwback read and reunion all tied in one! Not only do we see some familiar faces, or hear them, we also get a few familiar ghouls popping back up as well! It was the ultimate kind of reunion! The one you never wanted to attend either!

I still cannot believe that this is the end of M.J.’s adventures! It’s been such a blast! All the times I’ve shared with her, Heath, and especially Gilley! It’s been a whirlwind of fun! As always, Gilley is there to make me laugh, but his character did surprise me a few time in this one. You can really see the characters heading off in their own directions to get towards their happy ending. But since M.J. does coexist in the same universe as Abby, I will always holdout for more appearances from her in that realm. Especially with all the things that were happening just as this story wrapped up. The mystery was solved and everything was grand, naturally, but there were still personal dealings that I really wanted to see happen, such as Gilley’s wedding! I mean, come on! The guy had it all planned out and I would’ve loved to seen it in an epilogue!

Back to the mystery element of the story, I thought it was done impeccably well, like all Victoria’s mysteries have been! We have just the right amount of creepy and dangerous combined. And that always makes for an excellent read in my book! Especially when we have Gilley overreacting with fear, because, seriously, this is creepy happenings. I totally don’t blame the guy, some of the time at least! The gathering of ghosts were super creepy, especially that widow. She was seriously freaky! And to basically have the baddest of the bad teaming together to wreak revenge on M.J. and her crew, you know things are going to be intense. And naturally, along with M.J., I totally didn’t pin our bad guy down at all!

I wasn’t without a few tears as well as I read this last adventure. There were moments where you knew we were seeing the prelude to goodbye. It was heart-wrenching to say the least because I am terrible at goodbyes. My only issue was truly with when we exited the group. Things had just wrapped up, and we had all these surprises popping up during the book that I would’ve liked to seen come into fruition but sadly we end things just as the mystery was wrapped up. And since the book is now a year old, I fear that even a short story is out of the question that will show these lingering happenings coming into fruition. Though I am very behind in Abby’s series, so perhaps if I get caught up with her I might be able to learn what happened through a phone call, or maybe a surprise visit! One can always hope since these two series coexist in the same world!

If you have yet to read any of Victoria’s mysteries I would highly recommend them! They are just amazing! They both are the perfect blend of mystery and paranormal and of course there’s still the added humor and sporadic bout of romance! Neither one of these is a series to be missed because they each are amazing and of course, GREAT reads!


Overall Rating 4.75/5 stars—just a wee bit off the top because I REALLY wanted to see a few of those unmentionable things happen but they were apparently too far off in the future. But like I said, I still hold out on hope of possibly seeing or hearing about it later on in Abby’s series!