Audiobook Review – Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic, Book 1) by Melissa F. Olson, Narrated by Amy McFadden (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 10 hours and 52 minutes
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Release Date: February 7, 2017
ASIN: B01N1X87JG
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Disrupted Magic series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

“Scarlett Bernard is used to cleaning up messes. As a human who cancels out any magic around her, Scarlett’s job is to keep the supernatural world hidden—at any cost.

But on the eve of the Vampire Trials, a two-day tribunal that allows the otherworldly community to air their grievances, Scarlett receives a blood-soaked message from Molly, her estranged former roommate. Molly, a vampire, had been living with twelve human college students…and in one terrible night, she slaughtered them all.

Scarlett believes Molly’s been set up, but no one else in the Old World agrees with her. Meanwhile, the true perpetrator is determined to make sure Molly goes on trial for the massacre—and the penalty is death.

With less than two days to prove her friend’s innocence, Scarlett calls on former LAPD detective Jesse Cruz to help her dig into Molly’s past. But no one—Molly included—wants Scarlett and Jesse to bring the terrible truth to light.”

I really enjoyed Olson’s Boundary Magic series and was very excited to pick up the first book in her new Disrupted Magic series. I didn’t realize that the Disrupted Magic series is basically a continuation of the Scarlett Bernard trilogy. I would definitely recommend reading the Scarlett Bernard trilogy first. Despite all the recapping in this book I felt slightly lost and kept feeling like I was missing a lot of important context and background for this book. This was a decent urban fantasy but not knowing all the history behind the multitude of characters in this book really hampered my ability to enjoy the story.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was very well done. I would recommend listening to on audiobook if you like audiobooks.

This was a decent investigative urban fantasy. Some aspects of it were pretty typical: the heroine runs herself ragged, there are werewolves and vampires, the paranormal is kept hidden from the rest of the world. The idea of Scarlett being a null was interesting but reminded me of the Parasol Protectorate series. I also somewhat enjoyed Scarlett’s huge dog, but that reminded me of Mouse from the Dresden Files. In short this was a decent urban fantasy but not all that unique or creative; it seemed to pull things from a lot of existing urban fantasy series.

Overall this was a good, typical urban fantasy. I didn’t love the story or the characters but they were all decent. I struggled with all the background that I was missing despite the recapping, so I probably would have liked this better if I had read the Scarlett Bernard series first. However, since I didn’t love this….I don’t plan on finishing this series or going back to read the first three Scarlett books.