You Can Save Me

Carnival of Mysteries

By: R.L. Merrill

Narrated by: Victor Quixabas, Lance West

From author R.L. Merrill comes the follow-up to You Can Do Magic, Winner of The Paranormal Romance Guild Reviewers' Choice award and Finalist in the North Texas Romance Writers' Carolyn Contest.

Sixties folk singer Dane Donovan vanished from a desolate highway rest area in 1979. Forty years later, he’s found hitchhiking in the California desert on a cold winter’s night. He hasn’t aged a day, but the roadmap of scars he wears tells a chilling tale.

Veteran detective Walter Muse took over Dane’s missing persons case twenty years ago, but his haunting connection to Dane Donovan goes back to a peculiar run-in as a child with The Troubadour and his Talking Board at a traveling carnival. He receives a late-night call with Dane’s whereabouts and races to Laurel Canyon to see for himself whether Dane is real — or a ghost meant to taunt Walter and his somewhat precarious hold on his sanity. Walter’s carefully honed detective instincts are thrown out the window, however, when his obsession with the case develops into an undeniable attraction to the mysterious singer.

Dane is on a mission to stop a new killer hell-bent on picking up where Dane’s kidnapper left off, and Walter is determined to protect him, no matter the personal and psychological cost. They’ll have to rely on new friends and trusted colleagues as well as the power of a mystical spirit board to stop the killing, and have a chance at a real future together.

You Can Save Me is part of the multi-author Carnival of Mysteries series. All books may be listened to as a standalone, but this book is a continuation of the events in You Can Do Magic. Recommended 18+ and TW for violence and mention of suicide of a family member.

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Overall Positive Experience

This novel has heart and a good balance of bonding between characters and sexytime. The story is a mix of elements that kept me interested: fantasy, mystery, romance and a few others. What makes it less enjoyable is all the name-dropping conversations of the famous people this dude says he met. After maybe two examples, it doesn't add benefit to the plot to be like, "oh, Joni Mitchell? She was nice! Bob Dylan? He was odd with his melodies! Hendrix? Shame with the alcohol..." and on and on. It's likely that aspect annoyed me so much because I would consider adding the book to my favorites list, but the name-dropping stories are too frequent to avoid.

Fantastic!

This book grabbed me right from the beginning and didn’t let go. The story was riveting and creepy and I loved it. While you could probably listen to this without having read or listened to the other “Carnival” book by RL Merrill, I’m glad that I listened to the previous book first. I stayed up way too late (early?😂) listening to this because I simply couldn’t stop until I finished it. I’m moving on to the next one but I’ll have to read it with my eyes because it’s not out in audio yet.