Review of “First Grave on the Right” by Darynda Jones

Today I’m going to switch up my review catch-up with an Urban Fantasy series I started a while back.  I still need to finish reading the second book (and the ones after that), but wanted to go ahead and get my review up for the first.  This one is pretty good, but I’m still waiting to see if it gets to be as great as many UF fans have claimed.  On another note, I really love this cover.  It’s so different from most of the others in the genre, but really works well.

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Summary from Amazon:

Charley sees dead people. That’s right, she sees dead people. And it’s her job to convince them to “go into the light.” But when these very dead people have died under less than ideal circumstances (i.e., murder), sometimes they want Charley to bring the bad guys to justice. Complicating matters are the intensely hot dreams she’s been having about an Entity who has been following her all her life…and it turns out he might not be dead after all. In fact, he might be something else entirely.

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My Review:

I’ve heard so many great things about this series that I just had to finally give it a shot. The premise of a young woman being a grim reaper had turned me off of it before for reasons I can’t explain, but I’m glad I finally got into it. The world building in this novel is great and I liked the cast of characters. Charlie took a bit of getting used to because her sarcasm seems to almost never stop. I did find many things she said funny, but the impact would have been greater if it had been sparsed out a bit more.

Reyes certainly got my attention. I grew more and more intrigued with him as the novel went on, but once I discovered his identity it didn’t feel like his personality matched up. It seemed like he should have been colder and harder than he was, despite his thing for Charlie. I just have a hard time seeing how the old him could have turned into the new version of himself. My hope is this will come to light more as the series progresses–because I will be checking out the next book.

Overall, it’s not a bad read. The plot kept me guessing and the action was often intense. I think I just need a little more time for the two main characters to grow on me. Hopefully the next book will do the trick.  Three and a half whips for First Grave on the Right!

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~ by Suzie on October 19, 2013.