Karina Halle is quickly rising to the top of my list of favorite authors. Her humor is one of a kind and it shines through in her writing and the characters she births.Perry Palomino is your not-quite average young woman. She works an average job that she's crap at and still lives with her over-bearing mother, father and nearly perfect younger sister. She dreams of a better job, escaping the scrutiny of her family and of evil, menacing, darkly shadowed men. She attributes the dreams to her previous years of drug abuse but an old lighthouse exploration changes all of that.Dex is a semi-professional ghost hunter. Happenstance has him at the abandoned lighthouse at the same time as Perry. Triggering the events that lead to a new partnership between the two, ghost hunting for webcasts. Dex is a self admitted liar, he's blunt, aloof, mysterious, charming and heroic. What a combination, huh? “Well, I knew from experience that you weren't supposed to trust the guys you thought were as sexy as hell. Dark, brooding and mysterious? Handle with care.” These two are odd balls all on their own and paired up they are a riot of quirkiness. They both have some failure and damage but it is revealed slowly and Halle leaves the reader with many questions as to who they were in the past. While the relationship between these two is fun, endearing, sexy and at times frustrating - the story only partially lies there. The rest of the tale sits in the haunting of Perry and the connection between what her dreams show her and what she witnesses at the lighthouse. If you like a good ghost story, Darkhouse delivers. The boos and bumps in the night are in perfect contract to the uniqueness of the characters. We follow Perry and Dex on a path of discovering what is haunting the lighthouse, what is haunting each of them and what it is that connects them. Darkhouse had me laughing at times and covering my eyes at others. The best compliment I can give it is this... I am so so glad that this is just the first book in a long series as I can't imagine not having more Perry, Dex and their spooky escapades in my life.
