Wormwood Summer cover art

Wormwood Summer

San Amaro Investigations, Book 1

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Wormwood Summer

By: Kai Butler
Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
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About this listen

Parker Ferro owes the fae his life. They’ve come to collect.

When the Summer Queen summons Parker to her court, the private investigator knows there’s trouble brewing. Trapped into compliance by his past debt, he’s tasked with locating a missing girl in San Amaro. Now he has to find the girl or give up his life.

Things only get more complicated when a very familiar cop asks Parker for his help on a case involving murdered magic users. With the victims completely drained of their magic, the San Amaro Police Department needs Parker’s special skill set to track down a killer. Navigating through San Amaro’s paranormal underbelly while dealing with his own past and this new case is the last thing Parker wants or needs.

Now Parker’s stuck trying to locate a missing girl, stop a paranormal war, find a killer, and resist Detective Nicholas King’s many charms. Here’s hoping he doesn’t die trying.

Wormwood Summer is a 107,000-word MM urban fantasy with a HFN ending.

©2021 Kai Butler (P)2025 Kai Butler Fantasy Fiction Literature & Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Detective Paranormal
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Greg Tremblay, aka Greg Boudreaux, is such a good narrator. Here he added depth, accents, multiple character voices all with aplomb. He's just one of the very best voices out there.

The author's imagination knows no bounds, they really put a lot of heart and soul into the arcs. I do place an emphasis on arcs, plural, because there is a LOT going on in Wormwood Summer. The pacing could have done with some help because I found the frenetic nature of the action, the cases, the situations, the characters, the names, the events, the courts, the different magic, the romance, which gets a little lost in amongst it all, was stressful. At the end of the e-book you can click a link to read about how the MCs first met, which really should have been in this book with some other things pared back.

I like the MCs... I think. They do literally get together in this book with absolutely no lead up, it's like we know them already. This goes back to what I said above, that should have occurred on page in this book.

Overall, I'm interested and I don't always feel like I should jump into a whole series but Parker and Nick need further investigation, in my opinion. While this ends on a 'we know there is more coming' ending, it's satisfying if you purely want to read this book for a fantasy kick in between other tropes. The audiobook definitely makes it better due to the superb narration. Greg Tremblay has me wanting more of his narration so I'll grab the next audiobook and see how that goes.

Nice Entry to an UF/Fantasy/PNR Series

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Greg Tremblay is an amazing narrator and the reason I decided to try this particular book.
The story is well paced and interesting but I sometimes felt like the author was getting ahead of themself, mentioning things because they want to expand upon them in subsequent books in the series, not because they added to the current story. I do actually want to see where those set ups lead though, so I'll definitely be buying the next book in the series 😁

Good start to an Urban Fantasy Series

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There’s a lot of magical detective stories out there, and a lot of gay magic stories. This story has a really great and unique take though, with the main character’s source of magic being something previously unexplored in this genre.

Performance is amazing as usual by Greg. Solid 10/10.

Excellent all round: puts a new spin on magical detectives

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This story had great world building and good fast moving plot and good characterisation. The narration was also very well done. A great bit of escapism with a good romance as an extra sweetener, it was a great listen.

Great World Building

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Wonderful start to this series. Kai Butler is a great storyteller. Lots of action & humour. Reminds me of Hailey Turner’s Soulbound series. Greg Boudreaux is so talented at giving individual voices to a large ensemble of characters. He elevates every single book he performs!

Great story & narrator!

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