SOUL MASTERS https://ift.tt/S1cKJLX

Dr. Mayela Lehman has been experiencing strange visions featuring a dark, mysterious man. They feel like almost like memories, though they can’t be—perhaps the visions have something to do with the grief she still feels over the death of her husband. Mayela is an entomologist, and after a day of gathering native bee samples, she likes to stop by her friend Joni’s café for a cup of coffee and pin her finds. One day, while she’s impaling insects in her booth, a man walks into the café: “Standing in the doorway was the man from my hallucinations, a creature of the dark plains. Tall and slim, broad-shouldered, dark in aspect.” The man, Nathan de la Rosa, is much less sinister—and more handsome—in person. He reveals that he works in the renewable energy industry, and, after a short conversation, he asks Mayela out to dinner. Mayela is excited until she gets home and her mystically minded mother, Gabriela, tells her that Nathan is immortal and Mayela may be, too. Mayela thinks her mother’s crazy, but there’s certainly more to Nathan than meets the eye. He can help Mayela figure out the mysteries of her past, but what he wants in return may be more than Mayela is willing to give. The author’s prose imbues her fantasy world with sensuality, as here when Mayela and Nathan share their first kiss: “Until this moment, I hadn’t been sure he was real. Not when we walked arm in arm through the Art Fair, not when we hugged on the bridge, not when we held hands in the car. But now? Now I could taste the vivid, sensual pull of his lips, savor the lingering wine on his breath.” The story’s mythology is dense, and it takes a long time for readers to orient themselves in the world of the novel. Once things kick into gear, however, Gastreich throws enough complications in Mayela’s way to keep things entertaining.

from Kirkus Reviews https://ift.tt/mdyc5A8