I received this book to give an honest review.
Title: The House Always WinsAuthor: Brian Rouff
Pages: 324
Anna Christiansen's small-town life is about to go haywire. A young reporter stuck in a dead-end job, Anna falls head over heels for an interview subject, the bass player in an up-and-coming alt band. In short order, she pulls up stakes, moves to Las Vegas, gets married and pregnant, and moves into a big fixer-upper haunted by the ghost of a Sin City racketeer. That's when she gets notice from a corrupt casino owner that he's buying up all the properties on her street to make way for a parking lot. But Anna has poured her heart and soul into the house, and digs in hard to fight the system, not the easiest of tasks in a city where bribery, mayhem, and murder are standard operating procedures.
Can Anna's tough-guy ghost provide the help she needs to prevail in this dangerous cat-and-mouse game? Will Anna's life be left in ruins? Or worse?
Part road trip, part coming-of-age saga, part mystery, part ghost story, The House Always Wins is all Vegas.
My Rating:
Overall the book was okay I really wasn't expecting the end to go that way so that was pretty cool. I have to say my favorite character was Boozer. Just the fact that he was a friend through and through and he was pretty funny.
We are introduced to Anna who finds love in a bass player after interviewing him. She didn't expect to pack up and move to Las Vegas but hey that is what happened. While searching for a house she finds one that she just loves and wants to restore back to the way it was. It will, of course, be a job yet she will end up trying to save her home no matter the cost. She ends up uncovering the ghost that lives there and we learn that everything comes around full circle. It seems like fate has a way of making its self-known. It was a pretty easy book to get into just wasn't a lot of action like I was expecting.
Brian Rouff was born in Detroit, raised in Southern California and has lived in Las Vegas since 1981, which makes him a long-timer by local standards. A 1977 UCLA graduate with a degree in Communication Studies and a minor in Journalism, Brian has spent his entire professional career in media and marketing.
In 1999, Brian decided to fulfill a lifelong dream by becoming a novelist. His first book, “Dice Angel,” is a quirky mystery that gives readers a behind-the-scenes peek at the Las Vegas that exists beyond the Strip.
“I don’t want to sound arrogant,” Brian says, “but few people know this town like I do.” Readers agree. “Dice Angel” is currently one of the top-rated Las Vegas books on Amazon.com, with a 4.8 average customer rating based on 126 reviews.
Brian’s second novel, “Money Shot,” is the story of an unhappy middle-aged man who wins a chance at redemption by attempting a million dollar shot during halftime of the NCAA basketball tournament.
His third novel, “The House Always Wins,” released in October 2017, is a Las Vegas ghost story based on an actual haunted house the author and his family lived in during the early 2000s.
He is also a contributing author to the Las Vegas serial novel “Restless City.”
On a personal note, Brian is married with two grown daughters and five grandchildren. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, movies, music, sports, and the occasional trip to the casino buffet line.
