Her banshee scream is a death sentence. His love might be hers.
“You know that feeling people get when something bad is about to happen to someone they love? Or how some seem to know it’s their time right before getting into a horrible accident? That’s me. I warn that death is coming.”
Sadie is a banshee on the run—from hunters, from her past, and from the terrifying truth that she’s killed before. As an empath, she’s learned to shut her emotions down, because if she feels too much, she could turn lethal again.
But when Sadie falls sick from a hunter’s mysterious spell, she can no longer escape into the safety of other people’s emotions. Now in a new town with a new identity, she’s forced to feel everything. Grief. Rage. Longing. Fear. For the first time in her life, she makes friends, forging connections and breaking her careful rules for survival. And then there’s Nathan—the human boy she’s connected to by fate.
Falling for him may well be her undoing.
As hunters close in, Sadie must decide whether to let herself lose control—and risk everything that keeps her safe—all to protect those she never meant to love.
Her banshee scream is a death sentence. His love might be hers.
“You know that feeling people get when something bad is about to happen to someone they love? Or how some seem to know it’s their time right before getting into a horrible accident? That’s me. I warn that death is coming.”
Sadie is a banshee on the run—from hunters, from her past, and from the terrifying truth that she’s killed before. As an empath, she’s learned to shut her emotions down, because if she feels too much, she could turn lethal again.
But when Sadie falls sick from a hunter’s mysterious spell, she can no longer escape into the safety of other people’s emotions. Now in a new town with a new identity, she’s forced to feel everything. Grief. Rage. Longing. Fear. For the first time in her life, she makes friends, forging connections and breaking her careful rules for survival. And then there’s Nathan—the human boy she’s connected to by fate.
Falling for him may well be her undoing.
As hunters close in, Sadie must decide whether to let herself lose control—and risk everything that keeps her safe—all to protect those she never meant to love.
I am a murderer.
I’m also a total stalker and a harbinger of death, otherwise known as a banshee. After midnight, I seek out my death charges and I keen—a mournful lament that warns them that their ends are imminent. Their loved ones, the ones who need help to heal, will remain my grieving charges until they’re on the road to recovery, but a death charge only gets three days of warning keens.
Regardless of whether people believe banshees exist, our message sinks in psyche-deep and spreads across their family members like trickling raindrops pooling on a windowsill. You know that feeling people get when something bad is about to happen to someone they love? Or how some seem to know it’s their time right before they have a terrible accident? That’s me. I warn that death is coming.
If I can prevent a charge’s demise, I try my damnedest, but I can’t exactly walk up to someone and tell them they’re about to die. People don’t take impending doom well. It’s why my mom and I stay in hiding and live by three rules for survival:
We run if:
Our health is compromised
Our magic is rendered useless
Our identities as banshees or humans are exposed
Of course, the third rule only applies to humans. It’s hard to find a town without other paranormals like witches or vampires, but with most Paras hidden, it’s difficult to tell who’s who unless they’ve dabbled in darkness. Unfortunately for me, death is a kind of darkness. It’s a good thing we only keen for humans—they’ll believe anything before they believe in magic. Still, this means handling my charges fast to avoid exposure.
Which begs the question, why am I in my human form at sunset, tailing the guy in the black shirt and mask on this cramped small-town street in Huntswyck, Texas? I pass a bakery illuminated by the street’s crisscrossed string lights. The scent of fresh bread—warm, yeasty, and rich with cinnamon—lingers in the air, and for a moment I forget everything else. If weakness had a scent, cinnamon rolls would be mine.
But there’s no time for distractions. The guy glances back, and I stop outside a gift store, pretending to browse a display of sparkly personalized keychains. My gaze lingers on one that says Morgan, my current identity. Morgan doesn’t like sparkly things. She keeps a concealed knife in her belt buckle and dresses in black, though she isn’t goth or emo. She doesn’t smile much, which keeps people away. And she wears her long brown hair air-dried, because it’s easy to maintain. A lot of the keychains’ names were mine in past identities, but there’s never one of my given name: Iseult.
I don’t know the guy’s name, so I’ve dubbed him the Pianist. There’s no keychain for that either. When he became my charge, I innately sensed he was only a little older than me at eighteen with masculine energy. Honestly, I didn’t need much more than that to find him in the sea of university students who’d decided to stick around for summer sessions—a tether pulls me to my charges. But every so often, I sense that one small delay in a person’s routine might shift their fate—the burnt toast theory—and when that happens, I try my best to save them. Especially with this charge. See, he’s not just any pianist, he’s the pianist.
One night during midterms, he snuck a baby grand onto the university’s quad under the cover of darkness, and he’s played it every night since—even after spring semester ended. I’d been calling for a charge in the woods when the Pianist’s siren song drew me in. Some say he and his friends brought the piano out as a prank, or to ease people’s stress, or because his dorm wasn’t big enough to hold it—I’m not sure anyone knows the real reason, but everyone speculates. His first concert was epic. People came out on balconies or opened windows to embrace the beauty of the newest Billie Eilish played in evocative agony. Never once has there been a noise complaint.
It is universally agreed that what he does is not noise.
The Pianist’s death is preventable. I want to save him. And being the third night, this is my last chance.
The sun dips below the horizon, casting a pink-orange glow over Sixth Street, and it’s like flipping a switch on the nightlife. This university town comes alive with music spilling out of bars and laughter weaving between clinking bottles. The smells of southern comfort-foods like fried catfish, cornbread, and sweet tea mixes with the sharp sting of whiskey. Bathed in the sunset’s light, the Pianist passes liquor stores and outdoor cafes.
Where is he going this time?
Though it’s my third day of stalking, I know so little about him. I’ve never even been near enough to catch a hint of his emotions using my empath abilities—something that seemingly manifested because I have emotional dysregulation. Most of what I know about him has been observed from afar, like that he’s about six foot two and has dark hair that could have a slight curl, but it’s hard to tell under his backward cap. He keeps his face obscured by a mask, which might make him a germaphobe or immunocompromised or simply someone who can’t afford to get sick right now. He likes cruising on his longboard through campus, but that’s what he does in his alone time, so there are no telling conversations to overhear.
When I first found him, he was playing Darknite in an internet cafe. People kept calling him Loxley, but that’s a gamertag, not his actual name, and it didn’t lead me to any social media accounts. Maybe he’s a fan of Robin Hood? He could be a steal from the rich, give to the poor type.
None of this helps me to work out how to save his life.
Otherwise, he hides out on campus in one of the agricultural sciences buildings. I snuck in trying to look like I belonged, but something about me screams high school even though I’m almost eighteen. As a banshee, my aging won’t slow until I’m thirty, so it’s nothing supernatural making me look younger than I am, just my big doe eyes and baby face.
Despite tailing the Pianist for days, I don’t know if he has a job or whether I could make him late for whatever he’ll be doing tomorrow on his death day. Being late by five minutes could be all it takes to save his life. I don’t know if he’s got a car so I can slash his tires or where he lives or what he does in the agricultural sciences building. I don’t know what causes the sharp pain in my back when I experience his impending death in my body. I don’t know if he’ll be shot or stabbed or something else entirely.
I don’t know anything, so I can’t help.
The area hums with activity. Forks clink against plates, a chair scrapes across the cobblestones and into my path, forcing me out onto the narrow street. A neon sign buzzes above a tattoo parlor. A girl in a black dress tosses her cocktail in a frat boy’s face, and I only narrowly avoid the splash zone. The acrid fumes of the vodka drink sailing through the air stings my nose. But all the while, I never lose sight of the Pianist. He tucks his hands into his pockets as though crowds make him uncomfortable.
Why don’t you like crowds?
His black long-sleeved shirt is form-fitting yet airy across his muscular back. It hangs just right—light enough to let a breeze through yet sturdy enough to shield his bronzed skin from punishing summer rays. It’s the kind of practical fabric common among roofers or fisherman toiling away in the relentless Texan sun, though neither quite matches what I’ve seen of him.
I check his shoes to see if they’re work boots, but two high emotions—hatred and a heightened sense of zeal—slam into me from the side. Half a beat later, there’s a flicker of a shadow at the edge of my vision, a subtle shift in the air. A drunkard with a fishtail braid and thick sunglasses shoves a raven-haired woman into me. My hands dart out to steady her amid gasps from onlookers. On contact, a low buzz vibrates under my skin, like putting a palm to an old TV and feeling the static.
She’s a witch—one who’s crossed the veil into the darkest arts. Yet between the witch and the drunk woman who pushed her, I can’t help but think the Non-Para is scarier. Fishtail lunges, teeth bared in a snarl and fingers grabbing for the witch’s shoulder. Her hatred floods me, a boiling wave of rage that I instinctively pull inside myself. But these are not my feelings; it’s power to be wielded. I let it course through me, fueling a cool, commanding clarity as I step between them and hold up a hand.
“Don’t even think about it.” My voice has a steel edge.
Fishtail freezes mid-step like I’ve struck her. As if I could actually keep her away—she’s a wall of a woman, near six feet tall, square frame, with solid muscles. “I paid,” she shouts at the witch. “Now where is she?”
The other woman hisses in response, but not at Fishtail. It’s me she recoils from. Prejudice, like inky unstoppable poison, seeps into my veins. She doesn’t even know me, but she despises me. My back goes rigid.
Other paranormals don’t like banshees. They think our presence causes death, which is a ridiculous misconception, but we do buzz with death the way any of us can hum with darkness. Part of it is because we can sometimes see the dead who don’t follow the headless horseman, the Dullahan, into the underworld. The idea that we cause death is so deeply ingrained, no explanation will change their minds. It’s a lonely existence. Luckily, I have Mom.
A huff of air escapes me as I summon enough bravado to hide my simmering hurt. “Well excuse the hell out of me for helping.”
Clutching the protective charm around her neck, the raven-haired witch disappears into the crowd. Fishtail barrels past me to chase after her.
“Whatever,” I grumble. There are police blocking off the streets as the drinking hour begins. They’ll stop the fight. Maybe.
With the weight of their anger and prejudice no longer taking up space in my body, I remember my current mission. But my charge is nowhere to be seen.
The Pianist is gone.
Paramour by Robin Alvarez is a young adult fantasy that blends road-trip adventure with the complicated, emotional bond between a mother and daughter. At its core, it’s about Sadie and her mom, Rose, who are two Banshees constantly running from hunters who see them as nothing more than monsters to be killed. That premise alone could carry the novel, but what makes it special is how much it leans into the relationship between the two women. The action and adventure is there and is heart pounding and at times shocking , but that's not the best scenes of the book. Its the friendships. It’s the mother and daughter bond that I felt most drawn to this novel.
One of the most powerful themes in this book is prejudice of the unknown. From both Hunters , Humans and other Paranormals, Banshees are feared and shunned because of their connection to death, so Sadie and Rose really only have each other. Sadie, especially, struggles with loneliness. She’s a teenager who just wants to belong, but her mother is much older than her and at times is very black and white about the rules they must live by. Sadie’s yearning to fit in with others felt raw and believable, and it pulled me into her character even more.
That said, there are a couple things that pulled me out of the story. The book throws readers straight into the world of “charges” and grief without much explanation, which can be confusing at first. A short prologue or even just a scene early on laying out how Banshee powers work would have smoothed that over. Also, the pianist character is such a large part of the story in the beginning, but he fades out in the second half, which felt like a missed opportunity.
Where Alvarez really shines, though, is in the small-town settings and supporting cast. Most novels have this cookie cutter small town feel but the author made each town feel raw with its own demons to face. Also rather than making the main setting a huge known city it felt more personal being in small town America. By the final stop, I felt the same warmth and hospitality Sadie did with her new group of friends. Nick’s mean brutal wall of mistrust, Emma’s bubbly excitement, Christi’s steady loyalty, and Nathan’s instant love all added a layer of comfort to balance the danger.
All in all, Paramour is a heartfelt and action-filled fantasy that balances darkness with family bonds and friendship. It’s not perfect, but it’s the kind of story that sticks with you, and it definitely left me wanting to see more from Alvarez.