Review: A graveyard, a secret society and a lot of chilly air
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 31, 2011
This story has a little bit of everything spooky in it.  I haven't read the novel that it  introduces, but The Abandoned stands on its own very well. The story takes place near Charleston, SC.Ree is a student working on her master's degree in psychology and also volunteers some time at a psychiatric hospital.  She becomes entangled in a mystery and its occult events when one of her favorite patients dies, and she overhears Dr. Farrante, the handsome and much-admired psychiatrist and professor having an argument with another man who later turns up dead.  Ree overhears the mention of the Oak Grove Cemetery and the Order of the Coffin and the Claw.The cemetery hasn't been used in many years, and Amelia Gray wants to restore it before a bicentennial event comes up.  The cemetery hasn't been kept up, and Amelia is known as The Graveyard Queen, and wants to do the job.  Ree meets a young man named Hayden Priest who has an interest in the occult and is shortly to take his bar exams, and the two of them try to find out what is happening as Ree feels a presence and Hayden thinks she is haunted.I really enjoyed this story and have considered reading the first in The Graveyard Queen series.  I like the characters of Ree and Hayden and would hope to see them again in the novel.  The story is well written and is a page-turner.