Urban Fantasy Week Review: Cruce de Caminos by Heidi Belleau & Violetta Vane

Reviewed by Susan65

Title: Cruce de Caminos
Author: Heidi Belleau & Violetta Vane
Series: Layers of the Otherworld #0.5
Heroes: Sean O’Hara and Angel
Genre: M/M Urban Fantasy
Length: 51 Pages
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Release Date: May 21, 2013
Available at: Riptide Publishing, Amazon, All Romance eBooks & Barnes and Noble
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads & Booklikes

Blurb: Addiction and desperation drive Sean O’Hara to a critical crossroads. Will he make the right decision, or will the floodwaters bound for New Orleans sweep him away?

Street kid Sean O’Hara has never had it easy, but New Orleans has driven him to his knees. His girlfriend’s broken up with him for a sugar daddy, a gun-toting pimp has robbed him of everything but the clothes on his back, and he’s down to his last two Oxycontin. Sean’s no seasoned streetwalker, but he’s not above it either, not when he’s already itching for his next fix.

A familiar-seeming stranger named Ángel may be his ticket to some quick cash, but only if Sean’s willing to help him indulge a high-class john’s weird fetish for the night. As Ángel tells him, in this city and this business, you have to get a little weird to survive.

When night falls on the French Quarter, Sean realizes Ángel and the john want more from him than he was expecting to give. What once seemed merely strange soon crosses the line into supernatural and sinister. And Ángel, the man Sean had viewed as a partner and protector, might also be his otherworldly judge and executioner.

Review:

What did I just read? As the pages were quickly winding down I was fast realizing that this was not a romance. There was no love affair and no happily ever after for our boy Sean. Once the last page was turned and the story was quite obviously over, I was thrilled to see that Sean’s story actually continues in the novel, The Druid Stone. This, my friends, is just the beginning.

So basically what we have here is a very strange, very short, other-world kind of paranormal prequel into Sean O’Hara’s life. A life that took a turn for better after Angel, not so subtly, helped him realize that he was at a cross road and needed to make a decision, or his life was going to be nil.

Angel is kind of an angel and kind of a devil. I was not 100% sure where he fell in this other-worldliness but he definitely played both parts very well. He got Sean into some crazy shit but he was also the catalyst that sent Sean down the right road.

So no, this is not a romance. There is no happy ending, unless you count going into rehab to start your life over again. And there is no clear picture of what is coming in the next book. But what there is in this short story is the desire to see Sean win. I want to read this next book and see that Sean beat the odds and gets his happily ever after…without Christina.

Overall Impression: I really liked it

*I purchased my own, personal copy of this book for review.*