Review: Grave Witch

Grave Witch by Kalayna Price
Book 1 in Alex Craft series

Summary Deal :: Alex Craft is a completely broke (unexpected expenses involving her dog PC and his broken leg) grave witch who reluctantly accepts a job from her estranged sister (the family did not approve of Alex's grave witchery, so Alex got the boot) to help clear her father's name in the murder of the Governor. Coincidentally enough, her father was Lt. Governor and is now Governor since the old Governor was conveniently killed. Anyway, job gets taken and as a pseudo-bribe to a detective friend to get her in to see the Governor's body, she agrees to raise the shade of a victim of a serial killer to shed some light on the stalled case detective friend has. That's when everything goes wrong. Governor's body is all kinds of resistant to grave magic and doesn't even look dead to her grave sight like everything else does, not to mention all the crazy glyphs on the body nobody but Alex can see. Oh, and the serial killer victim's shade? Well, the soul had been practically shredded to nothing. When Alex finally gets the shade up, the shade is all kinds of not sane and ends up infecting Alex with a soul sucking spell of Not Goodness. And it goes downhill from there. Kidnappings (Falin to the rescue), assassination attempts (Death, instead of collecting her soul, pushes her out of the way to save her, which is totally Not Done), more kidnappings (again with Falin to the rescue, though she does do a good job of rescuing him back), messed up riddles, and, maybe the worst of them all, being followed by the press are seriously stressing poor Alex out. Not to mention preventing her from getting paid.

Major player break down :: Alex Craft, grave witch (think necromancer) and magic-eye (private investigator that generally "investigates" by raising a shade and asking it what her client wants to know). Death, a soul collector who pops in and out of Alex's life, much to her annoyance. Falin, cop in charge of investigation that Alex is reluctantly pulled into. Tamera (medical examiner), Holly (assistant DA), and Caleb (fae landlord) are Alex's best friends. PC, Alex's Chinese Crested dog who's responsible for Alex's sudden cash flow problem. And though he's not a major player, he is probably my favorite non-main character in the book: Fred, the stone gargoyle who claims Caleb, Alex, and Holly's front yard as his territory.

Classification :: Urban Fantasy. It sways from dark(ish) to medium, so we'll call it medium dark leaning towards the darker end.

Action/Romance :: Definitely an Action type of book. Lots of "let's try to kill/enslave/trick/kidnap people" moments. There is Romance as well. There's a whole triangle thing going on with Death, Alex, and Falin. It doesn't get resolved in this book, but I'm partial to Team Death. Falin is a pretty cool character and I could go either way on who Alex should end up with. But I've always been partial to Death/Reaper/Soul Collector type characters for some bizarre reason, so yeah. Team Death for me. (Which sounds so weird, but meh.)

Overall Opinions :: I really enjoyed this book. I wasn't sure what to expect going in. I saw the book in the store and the cover drew me. But I was already at my limit for books that trip, so I couldn't get it. I forgot about it until I saw it pop up in a passing mention on some blog I was reading (like "oh, new book for person, yay for release!" kinda thing) and it reminded me I wanted to look it up. Then I forgot about it again until I decided I needed something to read and I didn't want to read what I already had so I decided that I wanted this book and I wanted it asap. Which is not weird for me, sad to say. So yeah, I had no expectations going in, but I was very happy with the book.

Rereadability :: Definitely. I very much enjoyed the book and even though I know what happens, I already want to read it again. It was a very good book.

Getting Next Book :: Definitely will be getting the next book. Grave Dance is supposed to be released sometime in Summer 2011. No concrete date yet, but I'll definitely be watching for it.