Undercover Empath: Kindred Demon by RaShelle Workman

Genre: New Adult, Supernatural, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal

Pages: 185

Published May 15h 2016 by Curiosity Quills Press

Nineteen-year-old detective Rose Hansen has a secret. She can read a person’s intentions by touching their hands and that’s the least strange thing about her.

Only one person knows, her partner Jack.

At least that’s what she believes until a handsome, shirtless stranger appears on her doorstep in small town Blush Valley, California. He leaves her an envelope, but not before articulating his disappointment in her for ignoring her powers. The contents send Rose on a path toward the supernatural, solving her parents’ murders, and possibly even saving the world.

Aside from that, Rose and her partner have two important cases they’re working. The first involves a missing child. The other is the death of a stripper. Once it is ruled a serial killing, a very hot FBI agent from L.A. shows up and is given lead. To make matters worse, he asks her to go undercover. As a stripper. And that is just the beginning of her troubles…

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Rose Hansen has the ability to read a person’s intentions through contact through the hands, which has led her to lead a fairly difficult life. However, she decided to use it to her advantage and become a homicide detective. When a strange individual comes to her and gives her a lead to something that would open many doors, a homicide occurs.

A very interesting concept, there are supernatural elements with vampires and others who have ‘abilities’ but there is very little world building. There are a lot of moments of chatting back and forth or detailing a non-essential scene when there should have been more detail of the world elements. I think that is one of my bigger complaints, I can tell that the author knows how to write because we are detailing some nonessential scenes fairly well, but when the scene calls for more [or rather interactions call for more depth,] it remains fairly shallow.

The plot itself is very loose, in that while there is a homicide case open they decide to put Rose undercover as a stripper no less. The whole set up of before the ‘big show’ is distracting from the actual story, especially since a new higher up comes onto the scene and takes her shopping to an adult store to buy her outfit. She is expected to ‘put a show’ on for him. She states how uncomfortable this makes her and refuses, but the work environment is so toxic and demeaning that they laugh, hoot and proceed to make more derogatory comments about wanting to see her strut her stuff.

We then see Rose go to classes to perfect her stripper abilities…

I’m all for sexy scenes, even some workplace drama or even prejudice for the sake of a story, but this is outright piggish and makes it unbelievable. The characters themselves were not there for me, the plot itself was barely there for me too. If this had been a longer book I wouldn’t have read it. I wish it had been more believable, but it wasn’t.

I have read her other book, Because of you and I really enjoyed the way the characters were built, but this one… It just wasn’t there for me.

All in all it receives an “okay” rating from me, because the ideas are there, but the execution was not.