It Takes a Psychic (Ghost Hunters #17) by Jayne Castle Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, science fiction romance
Series: Harmony #17
Pages: 316
Published by Berkley on June 3, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Two unlikely allies search for the secrets of their pasts while on the run within the Alien world of Harmony in the thrilling new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Castle.
Leona Griffin is at the height of her career as a para-archeologist thanks to a recent Underworld discovery. Her high profile attracts the attention of an organization of elite, secretive collectors. They want her to authenticate the artifacts that aspiring members submit as evidence to join their group. The ceremony takes place at a glittering reception where Leona is shocked to discover that one of the relics is a powerful Old-World object known as Pandora’s Box. But she’s not the only one interested in that artifact.
Oliver Rancourt, a man with a unique talent—they say you never see him coming—is also there. Leona knows she must not underestimate him. Attempting to make a discreet exit, she stumbles over the body of a waiter wearing the emblem of a dangerous cult. Before she can alert authorities, a police raid sends the reception into chaos. To avoid being arrested, Leona slips away with Oliver—a risky decision that gets her fired.
Now forced to work together, Leona and Oliver pursue an investigation that leads them to the town of Lost Creek where the locals are obsessed with a chilling legend involving a long-dead cult leader and illicit paranormal experiments. But Leona knows the real danger may be the irresistible attraction between herself and Oliver.
My Review:
Leona Griffin KNOWS she’s in the middle of a setup, she just doesn’t know what the setup is supposed to set her up FOR.
The job seemed on the up-and-up, for select definitions of up all the way around. Leona is at the height of her career as a para-archaeologist, as well as temporarily famous for rescuing herself and her colleagues from conducting and/or being part of an experiment, trapped in the mesmerizing, mysterious and above all psionically powerful section of planet Harmony’s Underworld known as the Glass House.
She assumes that the university where she works as a researcher is just using her temporary fame to get more donations. Which would work for her – even if she hates this part of the work – as Leona IS a researcher and would hopefully get some of her own research funded by at least some of those donations.
But that would be too simple. Also not nearly as distasteful, not to mention dangerous, as the actual setup she’s stuck on stage participating in.
Her talent – or at least the one that is publicly known – is her ability to determine whether an artifact is a fake or the ‘Real McCoy’, assuming that old idiom is still in use centuries in the future. However, the elite collectors’ society that strong-armed her employer into providing her services for this dog and pony show has a different agenda. They’re just testing her, hoping that she’ll miss a fake so they can embarrass her in public. Not because they know her, but because entertainment value of one sort or another is all that the hired help is there for – and that’s all she is to the rich and entitled no matter what her professional qualifications are.
While the person pulling the society’s strings has a third, nefarious reason for setting Leona up. It’s a reason that reaches back into the darkest period of Harmony’s history and hopes to repeat it. No matter how many deaths the notorious Vincent Lee Vance caused in that chaotic past.
Or how many deaths his self-appointed heir needs to cause in their here and now to achieve their insane goals. Starting with Leona Griffin’s.
Escape Rating A-: This was one of those cases of the right book at the right time. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, even if the right time was several weeks before I could post this review. I love this series so much that I just couldn’t resist the siren song of dust bunny chortles a minute longer. And I’m not in the least bit sorry about that!
If you’ve never visited Harmony, you’ve never met a dust bunny. Which means you are really missing something special, because the native dust bunnies pretty much steal the show in every single adventure.
That’s particularly true in this latest story, as Roxy starts out by persuading Leona to rescue a bunch of caged dust bunnies in a clandestine research lab (and we all know where THAT was heading), then stealing a suspiciously specifically tuned crystal as well as a psionically powered dildo, moves on to picking up a fancy hat at a bridal store, and ends up by stealing Leona Griffin’s heart along with an entire floating fantasy amusement park thrill ride.
Dust bunnies are ALL adrenaline junkies at heart, and Roxy is no exception. Not that she can’t throw down when danger is near. Dust bunnies are predators, after all. By the time you see their second set of eyes, it’s too late for whoever has endangered them or the human they’ve decided to adopt.
And never, for a single second, think that it’s the other way around.
This particular entry in the Harmony/Ghost Hunters series, hearkens back to its immediate predecessor in this series, People in Glass Houses, where we were first introduced to the Griffin Sisters and their dangerous family secret. It also reaches way back into the connecting Arcane Society series and its Fogg Lake offshoot – back to Harmony’s literal and literary ancestors in Lightning in a Mirror.
I’ve read the whole interconnected series, both the historical/contemporary Arcane Society and the futuristic Harmony series and ALWAYS had a ball – and not just because of the dust bunnies although they certainly ‘help’. As they generally do. But I love the great interconnected, interwoven web of the whole thing. And I’ll confess that I’m not sure this one is a good entry point – especially with the web of connections linked to it.
But I DO love this whole thing and want to share it, so if you’re looking for a way in, try starting at either the first Fogg Lake story, The Vanishing, or the first Griffin Sisters story, People in Glass Houses. Be advised, once you get hooked you’ll want to read them ALL! (Speaking of sharing, there’s an excerpt below so that you can get a taste of this book!)
I know that I’ve talked more about the series as a whole than this particular entry in it, but that’s how I felt about this one. I read it because I was looking to be comfortably immersed in a world I knew and loved, even if – or especially because – I knew that the characters IN the story would have to go through some uncomfortable experiences and revelations along the way. As they did.
But the happy ever after was earned, the dust bunnies DEFINITELY got their just reward, and the latest evil was successfully vanquished. I don’t know which of her many interconnected worlds the author will be visiting next, but whichever it is, I will absolutely be there!
Excerpt from It Takes a Psychic by Jayne Castle (aka Jayne Ann Krentz)
The psi-lock was relatively simple. It had been designed to keep the dust bunnies inside, not to keep humans from opening it. She touched it with her fingertips, rezzed her senses, and unlocked the door.
The dust bunnies tumbled out. They bounced up and down in front of her-she got the feeling she was being thanked, and then all of them-including the one that had gotten her attention in the gallery and led her to the lab-dashed out the door and vanished into the dark hallway. Evidently they didn’t need her help to escape the mansion.
“Guess my work here is done,” she said under her breath.
But the discovery of the imprisoned dust bunnies put a new light on the Society. She had been well aware that the organization was one of the university’s major donors-that was why she had been sent to the gala-and she’d suspected that several of the members dabbled in the gray market. Avid collectors were obsessive by nature. They rarely went out of their way to ensure the legal provenance of valuable artifacts.
But discovering that the Society was conducting research using dust bunnies as test subjects was too much. It could not be overlooked. She would report the news to the director of the para-archaeology department when she met with him in the morning. Morton Bullinger might be willing to ignore issues of sketchy provenances, but even he could not ignore this. He would have to take the information to the university’s board of directors and they would be forced to confront the endowment fund people. There was no way the institution could continue to accept money from the Society.
She started toward the door. She was tempted to examine some of the more interesting artifacts on the workbenches, but she had taken enough risks. She could not afford to get caught inside the lab.
She changed her mind when the beam of her flashlight swept across a gracefully curved black crystal bowl in a glass case. She could feel the disturbing vibe of power in the object from across the room.
Curious, she went closer and rezzed her senses a little. The bowl was definitely Alien in origin and there was a lot of energy locked in the object. Fascinated, she put her fingertips on the lock of the glass case.
A sharp frisson of awareness sparked across her senses, rattling her already tense nerves. She was no longer alone. She whirled around, struggling to come up with a believable explanation for her obviously illicit presence in the lab. She was good at thinking on her feet but there were not a lot of options here. Something along the lines of the classic I was looking for the restroom would have to do. It was weak, but combined with her temporarily famous status and her connection to the university, it might work.
She opened her mouth to start talking very fast but she went blank when the beam of her flashlight illuminated the man in the slightly rumpled tux standing in the doorway. She recognized him immediately. She had picked him out of the crowd earlier in the evening when she realized she was being watched. Somehow she had known he was the one who had been keeping an eye on her. She had concluded that he was either undercover security or a professional antiquities thief. The one thing she had been certain of was that he was not the boring, harmless-looking collector he was pretending to be.
Oh, shit.
“Good evening, Dr. Griffin,” he said. He adjusted his black-framed glasses. “I thought I’d lost you. Are you selecting a little souvenir to take with you when you leave tonight? I don’t blame you. There are some very nice items in the Society’s collection.”
***
He thought she was a thief.
Under the circumstances, that made sense-after all, she was not supposed to be in the lab. But that left his own status unclarified. Was he a security guard, or did he plan to steal one of the artifacts himself? If she were a betting woman, she would have put her money down on the latter possibility. She was quite sure she was dealing with a professional thief. He probably saw her as competition and, maybe, a threat.
There was nothing notable about him-nothing at all-and that was precisely what had given her goose bumps. A man like this one ought not be the sort who got overlooked in a crowd, yet that was exactly what had happened out there in the ballroom. He had moved through the throng of well-dressed guests as if he were a ghost.
Not that he went completely unnoticed. On a subconscious, psychic level, people were aware of him. She had watched, intrigued, as individuals moved out of his way when they sensed his aura. A powerful energy field had that effect on others.
As far as she could tell, she was the only one who had really paid attention to him. She was pretty sure there was only one explanation for his near-invisibility-he possessed some serious talent. Yet he was going out of his way to try to conceal it. His ability to do that was even more interesting.
At one point he had cruised past her while she sipped a glass of sparkling water and pretended to admire a statue of the Society’s founder. She’d caught a glimpse of specter-cat eyes behind the lenses of the black-framed glasses and picked up the vibe of his powerful energy field. It would be very easy to underestimate this man. She would not make that mistake.
Excerpted from It Takes a Psychic by Jayne Castle Copyright © 2025 by Jayne Castle. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
