“Never sell yourself short,” Cesar smiled. “I’m certain there’s something here that I could utilize for a charm. Got any lizard bones?” – J.P. Jackson, Memories in Bone
THERE’S something instantly captivating about reading a book shaped—at least in part—by the author’s lived experiences, especially when those experiences are gay/queer, culturally conscious, and deeply intertwined with identity. J.P. Jackson’s Memories in Bone, from the Own-Voices, multi-author gay paranormal romance series Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch, absolutely embodies this complexity.
Jackson anchors his queer narrative in the rich, living tapestry of Mexican spiritual traditions, weaving them into the daily lives of a community of witches, mystics, and otherworldly beings, like imps (oddly endearing little creatures) and wights (just scary—not endearing!). The result is a world that feels both magical and utterly tangible, where the extraordinary seamlessly coexists with the prosaic.
At the heart of the story are our two gay romantic leads: the confident Cesar Aguiar, a powerful and renowned Bone Witch, and Artur Beaulieu, a gentle and self-effacing character who embodies chaos and mystery. Like the tale’s setting, their queerness and emotional depth are depicted with nuance, reflecting the authenticity of a writer who draws from personal experience rather than relying solely on observation and interpretation.
Jackson portrays Puerto Vallarta in all its intricate wonder, rather than flattening it into postcard-like imagery. Although the author does not come from this cultural background, he approaches Mexican culture and spiritual beliefs with a striking degree of sensitivity, veracity, and respect. His writing never treats the traditions he explores as decorative or exotic; instead, he engages with them through evident research, thoughtful attention, and a genuine appreciation that feels both energetic and sincere. This care allows the story’s spiritual and cultural elements to read as rich and immersive rather than appropriated or superficial.
The characters who emerge from this cultural landscape never slip into stereotype or stiffness. They are fully realized individuals, with personal histories, emotional depth, and lived complexity, rather than figures of cultural tokenization. Jackson’s genuine affection for and firsthand immersion in Mexican culture—the Canadian writer and his husband maintain a home in Puerto Vallarta—give the novel a richly lived-in texture.
This narrative authenticity strengthens both the emotional and supernatural core of the story. From the market of occult, religious, and spiritual items where our lovers first meet, to Cesar the Bone Witch’s home, where he practices his magic, to the intriguing “watering hole,” Frida’s, where the living and the dead gather, converse, and occasionally plot, the novel’s setting is as fantastical as it is culturally and regionally believable.
Aside from the novel’s wickedly entertaining supernatural elements, what undeniably stands out is the voice Jackson gives his gay/queer characters, particularly Cesar and Artur, as well as the revenant bar-owner Tom. They are written from the inside out, with all the sexy, forthright, and even vulnerable, messy undertones queer readers recognize instantly: the tiny hesitations before trusting someone, the instinct to self-protect, the raw mix of bravery and self-doubt. And, of course, the thrill of unbridled desire for hunky, hirsute mature men.
It’s Jackson’s Own-Voice storytelling that makes the emotional beats land so powerfully. This thread runs throughout the Haunted Hearts series, serving as the connective element that ties each standalone novel to the spellbinding whole.
What’s beautiful about Memories in Bone is how Jackson uses Mexican
supernatural spirituality not just as spectacle, but as a mirror. The magic, the spirits, the ancestral presence, all of it pushes the characters to confront the kinds of internal hauntings queer people know all too well: the fear of being misperceived, the weight of external prejudgments, and the self-doubt that grows in the shadow of both. The fear of one’s own power, of claiming it, and sharing it with the world. This is poignantly evident in the character of Artur, though not exclusive to him.
Puerto Vallarta is not just a setting; it serves as an active spiritual force that reveals what is hidden or avoided, shunned or celebrated. The supernatural elements insist that the characters look inward, sometimes painfully so, and reckon with past wounds or assumptions about themselves and others.
In many ways, this cultural spirituality and mysticism, with its respect for memory, ancestors, and the unseen, gives the story’s supernatural queer characters a grounding that is often missing in less diverse paranormal fiction. Instead of being punished or endangered continuously for who they are, how they are perceived by others, they are offered the chance to understand themselves more fully and to see their queer identities as a source of strength rather than a threat. It’s a compelling element that elevates what could have been a tropey gay paranormal romance into something far more nuanced.
What I find truly compelling is how the novel treats these prejudgments not as absolutes but as obstacles to be navigated, sometimes with help from the supernatural, sometimes through personal bravery and support from an intimate source like a love interest, and sometimes through the strength of community or found family.
This is where the Own-Voice quality shines again. Artur’s journey through self-doubt never feels like a moral lesson or a forced character arc. It reads instead as the slow, uneven, and sometimes painful progress of real queer life. And when the supernatural intervenes, it becomes both a threat and a catalyst, pushing the characters toward truths they have resisted facing, much like Cesar’s medical diagnoses.
What Memories in Bone does so well is refuse to compartmentalize its elements. Queer identity, cultural spiritual practices, the city’s pulse, and the supernatural encounters—they don’t exist in separate lanes. Instead, they feed and enrich one another. Writing from an Own-Voice perspective, as the Haunted Hearts series mandates, Jackson seamlessly weaves the queer emotional landscape into the supernatural one. Magic and otherworldly phenomena are not interruptions to the characters’ inner struggles; they are part of the same interconnected ecosystem of memory, ancestry, healing, and self-discovery.
The result is a novel in which the characters don’t just survive the supernatural; they learn something about themselves through it. They learn that the (literal) ghosts around them are sometimes easier to face than the “demons” they carry inside.
Reading Memories in Bone feels like engaging in a fascinating conversation about spirituality, identity, culture, memory, and the long shadow of self-doubt. J.P. Jackson crafts a story in which queer authenticity meets cultural mysticism, and in which confronting the supernatural becomes inseparable from facing oneself. It’s not just a paranormal tale; it’s a profoundly human one, rooted in the beauty and pain of owning your story, and letting that ownership become a kind of liberation.
