Series: Ravi PI, #1
Publisher: Atria/Leopoldo & Co
Release Date: November 1, 2016
Source: Review copy from the publisher
Rating: ★★★½

The first in a trilogy of whip-smart novels—currently in development as a TV series set to star Sendhil Ramamurthy (NBC’s Heroes and Heroes Reborn)—about a destructive private investigator and his eccentric coworkers, who handle cases so high-profile that they never make the headlines.

Ravi Chandra Singh is the last guy you’d expect to become a private detective. A failed religious scholar, he now works for Golden Sentinels, an upmarket London private investigations agency. His colleagues are a band of gleefully amoral and brilliant screw-ups: Ken and Clive, a pair of brutal ex-cops who are also a gay couple; Mark Chapman, a burned-out stoner hiding a great mind; Marcie Holder, a cheerful former publicist; Benjamin Lee, a techie prankster from South London; David Okri, an ambitious lawyer from a well-connected Nigerian immigrant family; and Olivia Wong, an upper-class Hong Kong financial analyst hiding her true skills as one of the most dangerous hackers in the world—all under the watchful eye of Roger Golden, wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, and his mysterious office manager, Cheryl Hughes.

Thrust into a world where the rich, famous, and powerful hire him to solve their problems and wash their dirty laundry, Ravi finds himself in over his head with increasingly gonzo and complex cases – and the recent visions that he’s been having of Hindu gods aren’t helping. As Ravi struggles to stay ahead of danger, he wonders if the things he’s seeing are a delusion – or if he might, in fact, be an unrecognized shaman of the modern world…

I heard a lot of buzz about this book, so I decided to give it a listen on audio. HER NIGHTLY EMBRACE is the first in a series that follows the investigations of Ravi Chandra Singh, P.I.

I enjoyed Ravi’s character. He’s smart, witty, flawed, and conflicted. He can see visions of Hindu Gods, or are they really there? They even tweet about him to each other. Ravi was once a religious scholar, but left his studies to become a teacher, a career that didn’t last long. Eventually he landed a job with an exclusive detective agency called Golden Sentinels.

This book is set up differently than I expected. Instead of having one central plot, the book is a collection of stories covering a different case Golden Sentinels is investigating. I think it worked pretty well. I do wish the secondary characters had been fleshed out a little more, which was probably harder to do jumping from story to story.

One note of caution: there is a lot of bad language in this book. A lot! After a while it became jarring and distracting. Swearing is fine when it’s called for, but this was a bit over the top for me.

Audiobook • 7 hrs, 30 mins • Sendhil Ramamurthy, Narrator

As the blurb says, this book is “currently in development as a TV series set to star Sendhil Ramamurthy,” so it makes sense that he would narrate the audiobook! Loved his performance as Ravi, and also did brilliantly with the other characters’ accents and mannerisms. I will definitely keep an eye out for HER NIGHTLY EMBRACE to come to the small screen.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.