White Trash Warlock (The Adam Binder Novels, #1)

Guthrie was a good place to be from, but it wasn’t a great place to live, not when you were like Adam, in all the ways Adam was like Adam.

Adam Binder hasn’t spoken to his brother in years, not since Bobby had him committed to a psych ward for hearing voices. When a murderous spirit possesses Bobby’s wife and disrupts the perfect life he’s built away from Oklahoma, he’s forced to ask for his little brother’s help. Adam is happy to escape the trailer park and get the chance to say I told you so, but he arrives in Denver to find the local magicians dead.

It isn’t long before Adam is the spirit’s next target. To survive the confrontation, he’ll have to risk bargaining with powers he’d rather avoid, including his first love, the elf who broke his heart.

The Binder brothers don’t realize that they’re unwitting pawns in a game played by immortals. Death herself wants the spirit’s head, and she’s willing to destroy their family to reap it.

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Perfect for readers who want:

• Books similar to Supernatural or The Dresden Files
• An accurate portrayal of poverty and the lasting effect it can have on a person.
• A world filled with supernatural creatures … and not all of them nice.
• Super sweet M/M romance … even a baby M/M love triangle.
• Brothers learning to overcome a tense sibling relationship.

Many thanks to Blackstone Publishing and TheWriteReads for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review and for inclusion on this blog tour.

I had heard so many good things about this book that I absolutely couldn’t wait to pick this up! I was so sure I was going to like it going in that I was actually a little worried that I’d maybe built it up too much in my head. Thankfully, that ended up not being the case!

White Trash Warlock is an action-packed, slightly creepy adventure into a world filled with supernatural creatures with a cheeky, relatable protagonist.

This book will for sure appeal to fans of dark, paranormal worlds like in the show Supernatural, but I think it presents a more realistic version of such. Yes, I’m aware that I just used realistic in relation to fantasy, but I stand by it, darn it. I ended up loving this, and I absolutely cannot wait until the next book comes out!

Adam Binder is a complicated, realistic protagonist, and I loved how relatable he was!

Of course, this is going to depend on the reader. As someone also raised at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, there were so many things I appreciated seeing in this book.

Adam is entirely insecure about himself when it comes to a lot of things, such as his looks or the fact that he wears old, grungy clothes because he can’t afford new ones. He doesn’t always know where his next meal will come from, and he has massive food insecurity. You know what he’s not insecure about, though? His ability to see the spirit realm . . . well, not insecure about it anymore, at least.

As someone who was raised in a similar situation, I feel it’s so important to see that heroes don’t have to be multi-billionaires like Iron Man and Batman. I think it’s so important that readers get the chance to see themselves as a hero, regardless of their socioeconomic standing!

As a fun added bonus, Adam also happens to be gay, which is sometimes a source of tension. Adam’s pretty resolute in who he is, so this is far from a coming out story. He’s not exactly confident when it comes to romance, but when it comes to who he’s attracted to, he’s unapologetic, even if he understands there are places he has to tread lightly. I loved that of all the things Adam is insecure about, this isn’t one of them. His sexuality is just A Fact™ (even if that wasn’t always the case).

A brotherly tale of love, this book is not … except it also kind of is?

Siblings are complicated, okay? There are moments you consider smothering them in their sleep. Maybe you’ve even got the pillow in your head, and you’ve even planned out how to make it seem like an accident. But you never go through with it, of course. Probably. Yet, you’d likely also throw yourself in front of a bullet for that same sibling. Why? Because … complicated. I mean, this isn’t always the case, obviously, but still.

The situation between Adam and his brother Bobby (or Robert, as he now calls himself) is made all the more complicated by secrets and lack of communication. Oh, and also this small thing where Bobby had Adam involuntarily committed to an abusive mental health facility and abandoned him there, despite Adam’s description of abuse and cries for help. That’s, you know, just a teeeensy little hiccup in their relationship.

On the surface, Adam and Bobby’s relationship seems pretty cut-and-dry with Adam as the good guy and Bobby as the bad guy … but wait! There’s more!

I told you, sibling relationships are complicated. Adam and Bobby’s story actually unfolds little by little throughout the book, and the reader gets to see things from Bobby’s perspective, as well, and Bobby for sure doesn’t hate his brother. Far from it.

At first, the brothers seem so different, but you realize that their background shaped who they were in significant and not all that different ways. Except that Bobby remembers what Adam doesn’t.

I’m not going to stick up for Bobby, because there are a lot of things he should’ve done differently, in my opinion, and he’s definitely a jerk. But … I get it. Just like Adam suffers from being caught in the cycle of poverty and so many things that come with it, Bobby, who was older and remembers more vividly what being raised was actually like, spun completely the other way and vowed to escape … which he did. It’s hard to fault him for desperately attempting to cling to what he views as his escape from the past, especially as the book progresses and you realize all the things that happened to the boys!

Let’s talk about this world full of supernatural beings and magic for a second, because I absolutely freaking loved it!

If you’ve ever watched the TV show Supernatural, you’ll get the basic gist of this. There’s all these paranormal creatures impacting the real world sort of thing, except with a little twist. In White Trash Warlock, the spirit realm is literally overlaid onto the real world. As in, they’re two separate entities, but what happens in one can still impact the other.

I really liked this approach! Adam basically could turn his Sight on and off to view the spirit world while in the real world. And when in the spirit world, he had to do the same in order to see the real world. I thought it was super interesting!

Speaking of supernatural … there’s elves and demons and reapers and all sorts of supernatural goodness that pop up in this series.

Oh, and warlocks, as the name might suggest, but they’re not what you think. Warlocks are those who use magic to break the law. I’m especially interested in the reapers, who played a low-key role for most of the book yet were ever present in the undercurrent of the plot. Given that Adam starts trouble for them in his own little way early on in the book, I’m thinking they might just come to play a bigger role in this series, and I’m super excited to see what that might be!

There’s a queer romance in this, and at first I was like ehhhh because it felt a lot like instalove, but listen … these guys grew on me.

I’m not a fan of insta-love, as I’ve said many times before, so when it seems like Adam and this guy immediately fall for each other, I fought the urge to roll my eyes. But it’s not quite that simple (which is why I didn’t), because MAGIC. Due to the entirely bizarre circumstances of their meeting, which are not completely Adam’s fault (but okay, a teensy bit Adam’s fault), Adam and Vic are kind of bound by magic. Which introduces a rather interesting element into their relationship, because is it really love? Who knows?! You’ll have to read and see.

I really enjoyed the introduction of Vic, because his character (and family) basically represented everything Adam wanted and didn’t think he had.

I mean, when you think about it, Vic has a wonderful family life, with a mother and older brother who love and dote on him and are super concerned about his well-being and with whom he’s close. He’s got a stable middle-class family with a stable job and what seems to have been a happy upbringing (if the photos on his mother’s walls are any indication).

I’m always suspicious of romances that seem too good to be true like this one does. I’m forever waiting for the other shoe to fall, and I hope it doesn’t, because I actually like Vic and his older brother, Jesse, and their adorable mother and just the entire dynamic. I’m really looking forward to what the next book brings them all.

Other reviews:

• Paper Fury (review & author interview)
• Read to Ramble
• Lily Reads
• Kinzie Things

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