The Big Adios, book three in H.L. Day’s Paranormal Problems: Necromancers series, returns us to the world of the Paranormal Problems Bureau for another exciting and intriguing story featuring a high-stakes plot and a fated-mates romance. It winds up the overarching plotline begun in book one, Deader than Dead and continued in the second, Dropping Like Flies, so it doesn’t stand alone, and I’d advise reading those books before jumping into this one. Please be aware that there are spoilers for the previous books in this review.

Quiet, shy Calisto Dominguez works alongside John Averill (Deader than Dead) and Griffin Caldwell (Dropping like Flies) at the PPB. But he’s no ‘ordinary’ necromancer; he can do things no other necromancer can – things he’s vowed to ignore and never to do again – and his imaginary best friend is not so imaginary. Calisto was eight-years-old when he realised how strange it was for a boy his age to have an imaginary friend who was in his twenties, and that Baxter Stuart Canmore (he insists on being introduced by his full name) was, in fact, real. Baxter is a spirit who walks beyond the veil, amongst those who are dead but haven’t yet moved on, and is able to move between that place and the human world. He’s also the only one who knows about the youthful, catastrophic mistake that haunts Calisto to this day and why he refuses to use the very particular skills that led to it.

PA to the head of the PPB, Asher Baines is gorgeous, enigmatic super-efficient and unflappable, despite John’s relentless snarking and attempts to get him to lose his cool. In the previous book, we learned that, despite working as Cade’s PA for the past three years, Asher has never met Calisto face-to-face; whenever Calisto was due to come in to the office, Asher made himself scarce – and now we find out why. Unbeknownst to anyone else except Cade, Asher can see the future. (Which explains the niggle I had with events at the end of the last book!) Asher has had visions all his life, usually snippets that might not make much sense on their own, but which he eventually – sometimes over years – pieces together to see the larger picture. He knows Calisto is his fated mate, and also knows they aren’t supposed to meet until a specific event takes place, so he’s been actively avoiding him for fear of changing the future should they meet at the ‘wrong’ place and time.

Things have been fairly quiet for the PPB since they captured the serial killer who was trying to raise a demon and realised his connection to the woman who’d almost killed John and Bellamy in the attempt to obtain an ancient mask she believed would bring her daughter back to life. It’s been a month since ‘Satanic Romeo’, aka Flynn O’Reilly, was dealt with, but Cade, John, and Griff are sure it’s only a matter of time before his mother Abigail turns up intending to settle the score.

And they’re right. Calisto is on night duty at the office when alarms start going off and Baxter tells him there are men with guns heading his way, accompanied by a woman telling them they must take Calisto alive. When he realises the intruders have cut off all the available escape routes, his only option is to hide and wait for help to arrive, so he heads upstairs and finds a good hiding place in Cade’s outer office, while asking himself why she wants him specifically? Surely she can’t have found out about his secret abilities? With O’Reilly and her hired thugs getting closer, Calisto is almost out of time – when a section of the wall to his left opens up and a tall, blond man dressed immaculately in a grey suit stands there, urging Calisto to follow. It’s only when the two of them are out of the building and heading for a very distinctive car that Calisto realises his rescuer must be the mysterious Asher Baines.

Asher has known this moment was coming for years and had prepared for it – but what he’s not prepared for is to discover that while he feels the strength of their fated connection, Calisto has absolutely no idea of who Asher is supposed to be to him. He treats Asher like a guy he just met – which he is, to be fair – and Asher is confused by Calisto’s lack of recognition of both him and their bond. But he’ll just have to shelve his disappointment; with O’Reilly back in the picture and intent on forcing Calisto to use his unique powers no matter the cost, they’re going to have to find a way to neutralise the threat she presents once and for all while keeping each other safe.

The Big Adios is an excellent series finale which pulls together the various threads woven throughout all three books to deliver an tense and exciting dénouement. As in the other titles in the series, the romance is of the fated mates variety, but the author finds a way to spin it that avoids the insta-love that often comes with the trope (and which I dislike) – in this case, having one half of the fated couple having no clue the other is The One. This offers the possibility for a relationship to develop naturally between Calisto and Asher, and I enjoyed watching Calisto slowly coming to re-evaluate his feelings for Asher – who does his best to hide his disappointment in the hope that Calisto will realise the truth in his own time.

I liked the protagonists, although Calisto is the more well-developed of the two. We get to meet his very large, very boisterous and very nosy family (and perhaps to understand why he’s ‘the quiet one’ on the necromancer team),to learn about his special talent and why he shies away from using it, and to witness his interactions with Baxter which are often very funny and insightful. Asher, however, is still a bit of a mystery; all we really learn about him is that he has precognative abilities, he’s independently wealthy, and he joined the PPB so he could watch over Calisto (and he’s going to do that regardless of whether Calisto ever returns his feelings). Other than that, I’m hard pressed to recall much more about him.

I enjoyed spending more time with John and Griff and their partners – they have important roles to play in the story and aren’t just window-dressing – and through Baxter, we get a hint as to where the Paranormal Problems series is going next. But that leads me to the biggest problem with the story, which is that Baxter is more vivid a character than Calisto or Asher, and the relationship between Calisto and Baxter is more entertaining than the Calisto/Asher romance. There’s no hint of a romantic connection between Calisto and Baxter; it’s obvious that they share a deep friendship and are more like brothers than anything else – but he’s one of those larger-than-life characters who steals pretty much every scene he’s in, and it makes the two leads seem a bit lacklustre by comparison.

Despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed The Big Adios. It’s well-paced and tightly-plotted, the humour is on point and the HEA is well-deserved. I’m happy to recommend it and the whole series to anyone looking for some entertaining and well-written paranormal romance.