Review - Forget Me Not by R. Cooper

Police detective Ray wakes up in an alley feeling drained, which, for a werewolf, is very strange. His keen sense of smell senses magic, which explains how someone overpowered him. He’s just getting his bearings when some people appear at the mouth of the alley. One of them is human and also smells of magic, but the other is a fairy, or perhaps a half-fairy. He is very pretty, as fairies are, and claims to be Ray’s mate. Ray doesn’t remember having a mate, but the fairy, Callalily, insists. It’s clear that Ray is the victim of a malicious spell, but to what end?

The Being(s) in Love books are set in a world where fantasy beings like fairies, werewolves, dragons and others are real and attempting to live alongside humans in an otherwise contemporary California coastal city. The stories are essentially stand-alone tales, although this one has some references to beings and events of other stories, especially, in this case, Treasure for Treasure. However, you can still easily read this story if you haven’t read the others.

“Forget Me Not” is more of a crime mystery that the other stories in the series. It’s a not-quite murder mystery. The intent of the spell cast on Ray seems to have been to kill him, or cause him to be shot and killed by the police. So, the puzzle Ray and his friends need to solve is, who is trying to kill him, and possibly Callalily as well, and why? There’s also the quesiton of why the spell didn’t work.

The story is told entirely from Ray’s point of view. Although he strenuously denies it, Ray cuts quite an heroic figure. He stands for truth and justice. Beings generally don’t trust the police, but they trust Ray. As the mystery unfolds, however, it becomes clear that Ray has ceased to trust the people he works with, his fellow police officers.

Callalily, ‘Cal’, is the kind of fairy we’ve come to know from these stories. He may have a short attention span, but Cal isn’t flighty. And, when it comes to Ray, Cal can be downright single-minded.

“Forget Me Not” is available from Smashwords.