Review: had some bits that annoyed me, but otherwise good
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 14, 2013
3.5I spent almost all of this book convinced that I wasn't actually reading the first of the series. All my googling couldn't come up with any prequel, so I suppose it must be number one. But there are a lot of rather important events referenced more than once that felt very much like the subject matter of a previous book. Carol's death for example or whatever happened with Eli and his ex-wife, which is apparently how he and Juliet met.These are not small matters. Carol was apparently Juliet's long-term girlfriend, who was shot, possibly protecting Juliet. That's a big deal. That's important. That was still greatly affecting Juliet in this book, but never fully explored. Then Juliet spent roughly a third of this book helping Eli overcome the aftereffects of whatever transpired in the mysterious past event. That's a lot of time to spend wondering what exactly it was that transpired.I was really, really bothered by this. Either fully explore it or leave it out, but to just throw it out with no background and no follow up is painful to read. Honestly, about 15% through the book, when I was so completely confused by these previous events and just realising they were never going to be explained I almost gave up. I almost thought that if the author was such a poor storyteller that she didn't recognise this as a GIANT plot hole I shouldn't hold out much hope for the book. I persevered though, and I'm glad I did, because eventually the book moved away from it's own history and developed a story of it's own. It's a darned good story too.It's the characters that make it I think. Juliet and Ezra have a wonderfully strained relationship. (Again, wish I knew the history of it. There is apparently 6 years worth.) He doesn't speak much, but he's a man of action. Juliet's normal life would give most of us grey hair and it was a lot of fun to watch her navigate a world full of ghosts and poltergeists. I rather enjoyed the FBI agents as well. There was a lot of humour in Charlie and Juliet's exchanges.The plot itself seemed to be split into thirds: helping Ray and his friends, helping Eli, and trying to avoid GW. The whole Ray situation wraps up nicely. The Eli situation kind of wrapped up, but really had no beginning and I suspect it will crop up again in future books, and the GW situation had no end since it's carrying over into book two. You can maybe see why I was never wholly convinced I really was reading book one.On the whole, however, I found the writing quite refreshing and there was a good amount of humour in it. I especially liked Juliet and Ezra's constants jibes and insults. It was a bit of a running gag. I did notice a couple repeat phrases though. I think about a hundred people must have had the corner of their lip twitch, for example. I liked it enough to buy book two and three, so that should tell you something.