There is trouble in the supernatural world of shifters, vampires and witches and Mina Van Helsing is stuck in the middle.  As a Reaper, a direct descendant of the Van Helsing himself, Mina has trained her entire life to police the supernatural beings who break the pacts agreed upon long ago.  On a mission gone wrong, Mina is captured and injured.  She wakes up with no recollection of the past few weeks except for strange fragments.  There is video evidence however of Mina killing two vampires without cause and for this, Mina must be punished.  Mina's parents know there is something bigger at play and have Mina sentenced to Van Helsing Academy, a rehabilitation center for wayward supernatural beings.  Mina's sentence is not just punishment, she is directed to find out the secret plot that  framed her for the vampire deaths and might begin a war between the factions.

by Gareth K. Pengelly

This one is outright silly, but in an amusing way. A complete loser trying to sell cars gets attacked by a vampire and subsequently dragged into a secret society of monster hunters. Because of being at the right time and place, he becomes heir to Helsing, or was there another reason? As a reluctant hero, his survival skills start to develop in ways he finds confusing.

This was a fun book, if lightweight. It's clearly set up as an introduction to a series and despite my wicked habit of often reading free first-in-series books and stopping at that, I'm tempted to try a little more of this one. I've put the second one on my ereaderiq list for now, not that it's very expensive but I want to catch up on A-list books before I entertain the thought of buying more just-for-fun books.

Beneath the caricature expression of characters and the well-into-fantasy magic, there's a spot of depth woven into the plot about discovering one's potential. An entertaining read.

"Strange Practice" is a unique exceptionally calm view of modern London's undead and non-human society under attack by (misled) murderous Christian Monks.

This is a book I had to acclimate to. The author writes in a calm, gentle, very normal way that's completely at odds with the weird things going on. At first, this created some distracting dissonance but, now that I've settled into it, I can see that it works.

This book is a fun read but I ended up sending the audiobook version back to Audible. The narrator sounded like she was doing a slightly below average sight-reading rather than a well-prepared narration. Her inappropriate stresses and mechanical managling of phrases distracted me.

Now I'm back on to listening to the voice in my head, whose making a much better job of the reading thing.