If the murderer you’re tracking is a vampire, then you want a vampire detective. Just maybe not this one.
It’s not that Jack Valentine is bad at her job. The youngest member of Oxford’s Seekers has an impressive track record, but she also has an impressive grudge against the local baron, Killian Drake.
When a human turns up dead on May Morning, she’s determined to pin the murder on Drake. The problem is that none of the evidence points to him. Instead, it leads Jack into a web of conspiracy involving the most powerful people in the country, people to whom Jack has no access. But she knows someone who does.
To get to the truth, Jack will have to partner up with her worst enemy. As long as she can keep her cool, Drake will point her to the ringleaders, she’ll find the murderer and no one else will have to die.
Body bags on standby.
May Day is the first book in Josie Jaffrey’s Seekers series, an urban fantasy series set in Oxford, England.
May Day is a modern-day vampire novel like no other, and it had me hooked from beginning to end.
Jack Valentine is a Silver, a race of vampires that live and walk amongst humans. They need to hide themselves from humans, so she works for a group called the Seekers. They are the law enforcement of sorts for Silver-related crimes. When a murder occurs on the first of May that seems to be Silver-related, she and her team are on the case.
The side characters in this book gave me life. Jack and her team of the Seekers were all unique and amazing, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the story to see how these characters grow in the future. I won’t describe them too much in order not to spoil anything accidentally, you should definitely just read this book for yourself.
Seeing Jack and Drake arguing with each other throughout the book was fun. The tension between these characters was undeniable, but they tried to deny it at every chance they got. Jack would do anything to deny her growing feelings to Drake. Jack did crush on Tabitha for the duration of the novel as well, so I am not quite sure which team to root for. I don’t typically enjoy love triangles, but I loved both couples so much that I couldn’t hold my anti-triangle grudge for long.
The unfolding mystery in this book was so fun to read! I wanted to figure out who had killed the businessman on May Day from the beginning, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple or easy mystery to solve. Jack had to explore nooks and crannies of the Silver lifestyle that she had never noticed or even seen before. Aspects of the lifestyle so disturbing that it made her question her new existence entirely. I loved the contrast of how the Silver interacted with humans while doing their investigation, and how the Silver interacted with other Silver while in a closed environment. Getting to see the small ways Silver can communicate with one another that humans wouldn’t even be able to notice felt like a real treat, like being able to access something that should have been closed off. I felt like I was in the secret Seeker society in this novel, learning the secrets of the world around them.
This book definitely touches on some disturbing topics, but they are luckily all listed out on the website Book Trigger Warnings here (https://booktriggerwarnings.com/index.php?title=May_Day_by_Josie_Jaffrey). Thank you to those who constantly work on that website! Some parts of the story were horrifying/scary, but I always wanted to keep reading to hope that Jack would get justice for those being taken advantage of. None the more triggering things were done just because or to give the character random “growth” they were intricately woven into the mystery and the darkness of the world.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new adult fantasy thriller/mystery novel.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 books.
