St. Martin’s Press
310 pp.
In Third
Grave Dead Ahead, our Heroine has to deal with her extremely angry
boyfriend, a missing person case that may be cover for a murder and her
father’s efforts to make her quit her job. Charley does a lot of really stupid
things in this book, mostly as a result of her ongoing obsession with finding
out more about Reyes. This turns into an attempt to clear his name when she
finds out that the person he was supposed to have murdered may have faked his
death.
This book runs into the main reason why I do
not like paranormal romance or urban fantasy with a strong paranormal romance
theme. The problem is when a supposedly strong female character is entirely
overwhelmed with lust to the point where they are doing incredibly stupid
things. If you are going to be writing a character who is supposed to be a
private investigator, they should seem competent, not faintly ridiculous.
I am also not very fond of the lack of
resolution concerning the quarrel between Charley and Reyes. They do not even
really talk about why he is angry with her except a few catty remarks from
Reyes. Instead, Charley wanders around in an attempt to continue learning more
about Reyes and attempting to solve her latest case. Some of the incidents that
are supposed to be funny are not really humorous and I really could not get into
the story. Some of the incidents that are supposed to be suspenseful and scary
were not or were predictable because of Main Character’s Magical Powers. The
part where Charley finally discovers why a character tried to kill her in high
school was played for laughs. (I found this to be extremely disturbing.)
This book was kind of flat and uninteresting
to me. (I cannot even really recommend the book for the sex scenes because I
kind of tuned them out after the umpteenth time Charley complains about Reyes’ ninja
booty calls.) There is at least one more book after this but I think I am
probably going to give it a pass.
Third Grave Dead Ahead on Amazon
Third Grave Dead Ahead on Powell's
