My name is Amelia Gray. I'm a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I've always held fast to these rules passed down from my father…until now. Detective John Devlin needs my help to find a killer, but he is haunted by ghosts who shadow his every move. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I've vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the headstone symbols lead me closer to truth and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.

This was another one of those books with such an awesome premise; a book I should have loved if not for the fact that it was so incredibly… dull.

I mean, seriously, it had all the things that draw me in to a book: first-person narrative, ghosts, paranormal activity, and a murder investigation. I was super excited to see how Stevens brought all these elements together, and in the end I was super disappointed.

Amelia Gray has all the personality of a dishrag. She’s bland, boring, and completely uninteresting. She’s also not terribly bright. When her car gets broken into, she confesses it never occurred to her the break-in could be connected to the murder investigation she’s just gotten pulled into. And when she meets Devlin’s ghosts - a woman and a child who are very clearly quite attached to him, she doesn’t even begin to speculate that maybe she’s dealing with the ghosts of his wife and child. Instead she goes on ad infinitum about how she wishes she knew who those two ghosts were, when it would be pretty apparent with anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together.

The supporting characters are no better. Their personalities meld together, making them pretty much interchangeable. And Amelia and Devlin’s attraction seems to hinge on a magical magnetic pull and literal (!) sparks that happen when they touch.

The murder mystery was lackluster at best, especially since Amelia spent very little time thinking about the mystery at all. And all the 4th wall breaking really got on my nerves. It was a poor attempt at foreshadowing - i.e. “But a tidy ending was not meant to be. Everything in my world was about to change forever.”

Yeah. I think I’ve said enough. Definitely not a series I’ll be continuing. ( )

Lots of plot promises, mostly in the form of foreshadowing, but nothing is being delivered.
The actual plot, if you ignore all the ominous hints etc, is just not enough.
Only the bare minimum of the main plot gets somewhat resolved at all.

The MC is quite stupid as well as clumsy, at times to the point of tstl, but nothing comes of it.
There are quite a few scenes in which the MC is on a level with the horror movie stupid blond that dies first because she went alone into the dark cellar.
The MC's stupidity has no serious consequences at least. I find this quite confusing because the stupidity of protagonists usually is a lazy plot device. But it doesn't even serve a purpose here. That at least has the advantage that it's not nearly as infuriating.

The supernatural elements are just as vague as the rest of the world. I can't imagine the entire mess being resolved in an even slightly satisfactory way in later books. As soon as the author tries to explain anything at all, it will inevitably rain contradictions.

I won't continue the series. ( )

Fun with a bit more of a quiet, macabre bent than most urban fantasy. Heroine is not 'uber end-all-be-all kick-ass zomg' superhero, just a regular woman who sees ghosts...unfortunately. She's got a quiet, normal career, a quiet, normal life, and ends up finding something that pulls her into something not so quiet or normal. Enjoyed it very much -- the rest of the series is on my to-read list, with the next book on my reader already. ( )

Another LT rec, and a winner. This was some grade-A-ghost-story stuff, and in a passage or two, it toed the boundary with Horror (my definition of horror anyway). I really enjoyed the graveyard background information, and the facts involving the symbolism used on gravestones.

The plot of the mystery is a tad gruesome for my taste, although it's not graphic at all until the end, as they get closer to identifying the murderer, and details start to emerge that I could have done without.

I thought the characters were well written and well developed and I really got engrossed in the story, and was sorry to see it end. Saying that, however, I'm not feeling confident about continuing with the series. Reading the synopsis' and a handful of reviews for subsequent books makes me think that author is more interested in yanking her characters around emotionally than writing good, spooky mysteries. I'll have to see how I feel as time goes on - will memories of this story draw me back in, or will they fade altogether.

NB: I rated this 4.5 stars just after I finished it; with a few days distance, I really want to nudge it back down to 4 stars and will probably do so, as I can no longer remember why I thought it was worth that extra .5 star. ( )

Not my usual type of book, but I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading the others in the series. ( )