Elemental by Whitney Hill
Arden Finch is a private investigator. As a sylph, she is in danger from elves who are set on killing her kind. She makes every attempt to hide her identity, but when an elf asks her for help with a missing person case, she takes it on.
Genre
Urban fantasy
Blurb
Enter an urban fantasy world where elves, vampires, weres, djinn, and others maintain a precarious balance of power in North Carolina. Welcome to Otherside.
Private investigator and sylph Arden Finch is determined to come out of the shadows and practice her forbidden magic. There's just one problem: the elves have a bounty on elementals like her.
When an elf hires Arden without realizing what she is, she seizes the chance to gain leverage in the dangerous world of Otherside-even if it means risking exposure. But as the case grows more perilous, Arden draws the attention of the region's deadliest power players.
Fans of Kim Harrison, Faith Hunter, and the early Anita Blake series will find a kick-ass heroine to love in Arden.
Content warnings: swearing, light consensual sex, physical violence, death, slurs (not toward any real racial or ethnic group/identity), threat of sexual violence.
Review
This is a fast-paced urban fantasy/mystery story that I'm glad I got to read. It's a fairly standard urban fantasy realm, with common creatures like werewolves, vampires, and elves. The djinn were interesting and I wanted to know more about them; they were featured only a little bit and I didn't feel like I had a full understanding of them.
Arden is a great main character and I really liked her personality. The story made me care about her so scenes were more intense. Sometimes I had to read past the planned chapters because of the cliffhangers. The mystery is teased out as the story goes and by the end I had to finish it in one sitting to fully understand what was going on.
It's a short novel that can easily be finished in a couple days. It only took me longer because I was reading many other books at the time. It's a polished, professional indie read recommended to fans of urban fantasy.