Eleventh Grave in Moonlight
3 Stars

Charley Davidson, private investigator, grim reaper and ancient goddess extraordinaire, has her hands full investigating the couple who abducted her husband Reyes as a baby. As more details are revealed, Charley comes to understand the true extent of their malice and the fact they remain a very real and persistent threat.

A disappointing installment. The series has strayed so far from its original premise that it is barely recognizable as a paranormal mystery. While the investigation into the Fosters is interesting and provides additional insight into Reyes' personality, the ongoing character development leaves much to be desired.

Charley's snark, once so entertaining, is now simply childish and irritating. Moreover, the lack of communication with Reyes is also exceedingly annoying, especially give their agreement in the previous book. Both are still keeping secrets and it is clear that the fragile trust between them is eroding.

Despite these issues, Darynda Jones's writing is engaging and the final twist at the end of the book has me eager to find out what happens next. One can only hope that the last two installments will return to the Charley and Reyes I have come to love so much.

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I swear, every time I think the last Charley Davidson I read is going to end up being my favorite one, I read the next book in the series and I'm blown away all over again! I love all the characters and how they are forming a tight knit group, which will be necessary in the fight between good and evil that is being forecast. The more we learn about them, the more we realize they all have a destiny and a role to play, not just Charley, Reyes and Beep. I can't wait to see where the next book takes me!

5/5 stars. ( )

I love the sarcastic humor in this series. Even in the direst situation, Charley either has a hilarious thought or something smartass to say which has me cracking up a lot.

As usual, Charley is juggling many things at once. She’s the Grim Reaper so she has to deal with the departed who cross over through her but now that she learned she is a god, she has even more to deal with. It doesn’t help that she got in an argument with the Archangel Michael and now angels are watching her every move. She thinks it has to do with her threatening to take over the world or it could be that her husband Reyes is from down under—not Austrailia—the other down under.

When Reyes was born on Earth, he was kidnapped from his birth parents by a creepy couple, the Fosters, who then handed him over to a monster of a man who abused him for most of his life. Charley had investigated the couple and found out that they had another son name Shawn who she was pretty sure they had abducted aslo but they raised him until adulthood. Charley was surprised when Shawn walked into her office and asked her to investigate the Fosters. He told her that he had secretly tested his DNA against theirs and knows they are not his real parents. He also admitted to her that he saw her parked near their home and had run her license plate so he knew who she was. She wasn’t as stealthy as she thought she was.

Charley and Reyes’ still have their daughter in hiding since so many dark forces are after her like Satan and Eidolon, the evil god from another realm. It’s hard for Charley to live apart from her baby but she knows she has to do it to keep her safe.

She also is dealing with a stalker who is stalking her best friend’s daughter and trying to figure out what her Uncle Bob is up to because he has been acting strange.

The one thing that bothers me about this series is the small children who are either ghosts or get killed by either accidents or evil people. I mean, I know this kind of thing happens in the world but this author seems to be obsessed with having creepy children ghosts and having bad guys kill children. For this reason, this will probably be my last Charley Davidson book. It just rips out my soul to see bad things happen to children and to see it over and over again is just too much for me to handle. In this book alone, there was a ghost of a toddler who had died because a dresser fell on top of him, a ten-year-old boy ghost, bones of a child that were found and the little creepy girl who is a regular in the series…and one more near the end of the book. That is the one that made up my mind about booting this series from my reading list. It’s too bad because this is an impressive series that I would have really like to continue but the excessive abused and dead children thing ruined it for me.

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I enjoyed it but it was pretty much more of the same. Charley named inanimate objects. Reyes glowered. Charley continued to get more and more powerful. Just when I was wondering if I needed to go on with the series she set it up so there's no possible way I can not read the next one. The story ended with a bang. ( )

Darynda Jones is quickly becoming the second author alive for whom I'd go out of my way to have a conversation with. Folded into a zany, quirky, funny urban fantasy series is some deeply well thought out theology; hidden amid the rapid-fire one-liners, Jones tackles head on the issues of God, free-will, and why He "allows' pain and suffering. And she doesn't take it lightly, and she doesn't go for easy answers or glib reasoning. She's successfully mixed silliness and the very opposite of silliness and I'm a little bit in love with her for pulling it off.

Eleventh Grave... clears a lot of the ongoing questions up, and I'd go so far as to say it brings the major story-arc to a close. The climatic scene was so shattering, the resolution was almost an afterthought. This is by no means the end of the series, as far as I know - there's still a lot of questions unanswered so it had better not be.

It was mostly excellent; my complaints are twofold: The first - we don't find out what happened to Strawberry Shortcake's brother. I hate unresolved stuff like that. Second: I have to preface this with the disclaimer that I'm not a prude. Sex scenes don't bother me in the slightest, but Jones went a little too far for my comfort in one of the scenes here. It wasn't that it was deviant in any way, but after 11 books I feel like I've come to know Charlie and Reyes; like an invisible, unacknowledged member of the gang. And yeah, I'd rather not know as much about Charlie and Reyes as I got from that scene. At one point it stopped being sexy and started being really awkward. On the flip side, she wrote a hell of a homage to When Harry Met Sally in another scene.

Awkward sex aside, I'm with Jones and Charlie until the wheels fall off. I'd say until hell froze over but apparently, that's a thing. ( )