Book Review: Shutter by Courtney Alameda

Horror has a new name: introducing Courtney Alameda.
Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.
When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying.
Lock, stock, and lens, she’s in for one hell of a week.

I don't typically read horror novels because if I don't like scary movies; why would I like scary books? 
This wasn't bad. Not really scary either. (If you want scary, listen to creepy music and read this. 10x scarier. Trust me.)
It's about ghosts and hunting them. I would've wanted a more detailed description into how the whole hunting thing works and how a "tetrachromat" sees the paranormal. There's enough to get the basics and understand the story, but it could've benefit from a lot more. That would have probably called for two books instead of one. I'm glad this was a novel, so it's a toss up. 
The story itself was interesting. Highly predictable, but entertaining. I knew who the entity was and what was going to happen to the boys about half way into it. Sorry. They were good twists, but predictable. 
I liked Ryder. He was a good character and their relationship seemed understandable in the number of pages we were given. Maybe a little fast, but I'm a sucker for romance. He's definitely a fictional hottie. (What are they called? Do they have a name?) Plus, he was Australian. Always welcome in my books. (Yes, that is a pun.)
If you like horror/ghosts/adventure with a dash of romance; this is the book for you. 

Read: March 2015
My Rating: 3.75 stars / 5 stars