Quick Take
- Narration: Kale Williams has a warm, naturalistic delivery that suits the holiday atmosphere and the relationship dynamics at the center of the story, handling the paranormal investigation scenes without tipping into melodrama.
- Themes: Psychic partnership in crime-solving, navigating a new relationship through family pressure and a hostile ex, the residue of unresolved pasts on the present
- Mood: Warm and seasonally atmospheric, with genuine suspense threading through the holiday setting and the relationship dynamics
- Verdict: A well-constructed holiday installment that deepens the Simon and Vic dynamic while delivering a satisfying supernatural mystery, best experienced after the first book in the Badlands series.
I have a soft spot for mystery series that take their romantic subplot as seriously as their plot, where the relationship between the central pair is developed with the same care and specificity the author gives to the crime mechanics. Morgan Brice does this consistently in the Badlands series, and Lucky Town, the second installment, confirms that the Simon and Vic dynamic was not a first-book fluke that the writer is now coasting on. I listened to it on a quiet November afternoon, which was the right call. Kale Williams’s narration and the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas arc give the audiobook a specific warmth that is harder to access outside the season, though I suspect the mystery elements would work regardless of the month in which you listen.
Pittsburgh, Vic’s Family, and Everything That Comes With Them
The central social challenge of Lucky Town is not the murder investigation, though that is what drives the plot forward. It is Simon Kincaide, psychic medium and ghost tour operator from Myrtle Beach, accompanying homicide detective Vic D’Amato back to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving with Vic’s large, exuberant, and highly opinionated family. Brice is genuinely skilled at this kind of domestic texture: the specific discomfort of being a new partner introduced to an established family unit during a holiday when everyone’s expectations are already elevated, the presence of a bitter ex-boyfriend designed specifically to complicate the occasion, the constant negotiation of who you are individually versus who you are as a couple in front of people who have strong feelings about both questions and no particular restraint about expressing them. Kale Williams voices these scenes with the same naturalistic ease he brings to the supernatural investigation sequences, and that tonal consistency is one of the audiobook’s real strengths. He does not shift register between the family dinner scenes and the ghost encounters, reflecting Brice’s own choice to treat both as equally real and equally demanding components of Simon and Vic’s life together.
The Ghost That Asks More Than Simon Can Give
Parallel to the Pittsburgh family dynamics, a murdered woman’s ghost approaches Simon asking for justice. Cold cases are the paranormal mystery genre’s most reliable structural mechanism, and Brice uses it here with enough specificity that it does not feel like mere genre furniture assembled from familiar parts. The murdered woman’s situation has a folk-horror dimension tied to a Christmas legend, giving the supernatural element a distinctive texture that distinguishes it from generic ghostly business. Then a new murder back in Myrtle Beach looks suspiciously familiar in the ways that matter to someone with Simon’s particular sensory access to the dead, and the murdered man’s ghost turns out to be considerably less cooperative than Simon’s usual contacts. The two cases converge in a way that requires both Simon’s psychic skills and Vic’s investigative instincts working together, which is the series’ structural logic executed cleanly and without the contrivance that can make this kind of convergence feel artificially engineered. Reviewers who have followed the series from the beginning consistently describe Lucky Town as a genuine deepening of what the first book established rather than a placeholder installment keeping the series alive between more substantial volumes.
The Novella Format and What It Costs the Story
One reviewer described this as pretty short and not a book, offering novella as the more accurate classification, and that framing is worth taking seriously before you download expecting a full-length listening commitment. At three hours and nine minutes, Lucky Town has substantially less room to develop its mystery than a full-length novel would, and the investigation feels appropriately compressed relative to what the premise could support given more space. The superficiality that the same reviewer identified in the story is partly a function of format rather than execution: Brice is working in a space where character warmth, seasonal atmosphere, plot momentum, and relationship development all have to coexist in a compressed runtime without any single element getting enough breathing room. For readers of the series who want to spend more time with Simon and Vic in the holiday context, the novella format delivers that time efficiently. For listeners who prioritize intricate mystery plotting over relationship dynamics and seasonal atmosphere, it will feel thinner than the first book in ways that are structural rather than the result of the author’s declining craft or attention.
Who Should Download This and Who Should Start Elsewhere
Lucky Town works best as the second chapter in an ongoing relationship with Simon and Vic rather than as a series entry point for new readers. The emotional payoff of watching Vic navigate his family and his history while Simon negotiates ghosts and new-relationship anxiety depends substantially on knowing who these people are from the first book and what it cost them to get to where they are at the start of this one. Listeners who enjoy holiday-set paranormal mysteries with gay protagonists and a relationship-forward structure will find this exactly what they came for within its runtime. Kale Williams’s narration is consistently praised across the Badlands series, and his performance here is warm and specific enough to carry the shorter format without it feeling slight. For new readers, beginning with Badlands book one and arriving at Lucky Town with full context will make these three hours considerably richer than approaching them without that foundation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Lucky Town a full-length novel or a novella, and does that affect the mystery’s depth?
It is a novella, running just over three hours in audio. The mystery is satisfyingly resolved within that runtime, but the investigation is more compressed than a full-length series entry would be. The relationship and holiday atmosphere get proportionally more space, which suits listeners primarily invested in Simon and Vic as characters.
Do I need to have listened to Badlands before starting Lucky Town?
Strongly recommended. Lucky Town assumes familiarity with Simon’s psychic abilities, his relationship with Vic, and the Myrtle Beach setting established in the first book. The emotional stakes of the Pittsburgh family visit and the ex-boyfriend subplot land considerably harder with that prior context firmly in place.
How does Kale Williams handle the paranormal investigation scenes alongside the holiday relationship dynamics?
Williams maintains a consistent naturalistic register across both types of scene, which suits the series’ tone. He does not overplay the ghostly encounters or the holiday warmth, letting the material do the work. Reviewers consistently praise his narration across the full Badlands series.
Is the folk-horror Christmas element in Lucky Town developed fully, or is it mainly a plot mechanism?
It functions as more than a simple plot device but receives less development than it might in a full-length novel. The folk-horror legend provides the supernatural investigation with a distinctive texture that lifts it above generic ghost story mechanics, though at novella length it does not receive the space a longer format would allow.
