Review: Looking forward to the second book
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 23, 2013
Sometimes a book has so much potential that one can overlook the flaws it may have. Better Off Dead started out a little too fast, then came to a ridiculously slow crawl through the middle, but had me wanting more of Lily Harper’s story by the time I got to the end. Go figure! I’m glad I stuck through because I really think this series has a lot of promise and can have some pretty fun and unique things to offer in the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance genre!We don’t learn much of Lily Harper in the beginning other than that she lives a rather ordinary and drab life. She has two best friends – which includes her mother.  She is a self-motivator, and by that I mean she is always finding instances in her life to repeat and apply favorite quotes and sayings from inspirational leaders and self-help gurus. She’s also part of a medieval reenactment club that surprisingly comes in handy later on in the story. The reader learns all of this right before she dies in a car accident about 15 pages into the book!!! After Lily dies she finds herself number 3,750,045 in a massive waiting room where it’s determined that there’s been a mistake and Lily has died before her time. Technically it was Lily’s fault for being on the phone while driving (distracted driving is dangerous) but the bigger picture is that her guardian angel, a forgetful alcoholic guardian angel, wasn’t there for Lily when he needed to be. This is where the concept of the Kingdom, the Shade, and the Underground City are first introduced, all pretty self-explanatory I think. Lily is offered a job as a Retriever as restitution where if she collects and relocates ten souls she can bypass Shade and go directly to the Kingdom. It’s kind of like passing ‘GO’ in Monopoly, collecting the $200 and hitting Park Place all in one roll!I really love the entire concept of the storyline. AfterLife Enterprises sort of reminded me of a modernized Beetlejuice when Barbara and Adam first go to meet their case worker Juno. I don’t want to go any more into the introductory part of Lily’s new life because to be honest it’s a lot of fun. I just felt that the beginning was a little rushed. I don’t know if that was supposed to be a part of the story (lay Lily’s options out in front of her super-duper quickly and tell her she has .5 seconds to choose certain details without really thinking anything through)… or if the author was just really excited to get the story going. *shrugs* I suppose Neo didn’t get much time to think things over when Morpheus offered him the choice between the red and blue pill either….so I get it.Lily’s guardian angel, alcoholic Bill, is a character I came to hate (very quickly) and love (I couldn’t believe it!) His crude and ridiculous comments soon had me laughing and became a true delight throughout the book. Maybe it’s my weird sense of humor but I liked the rude little man. Tallis Black grew on me too, I admit. He didn’t seem like my cup o’ tea to be honest. He’s very dark, standoffish, and his Scottish brogue was so heavy I found myself reading a loud with an accent even if I didn’t want to. It was honestly a bit distracting. But again, towards the end of the book Tallis became this hott alpha male that I seriously didn’t mind so much. I could learn to deal with that brogue of his!While I could somewhat relate to Lily I couldn’t quite come to like her…even by the end of the story. Even now I can’t recall any great qualities I found in her and I find myself thinking more of Bill and Tallis.I wasn’t a big fan of Lily getting an entire new body makeover when she decided to take the job with Afterlife Enterprises. Can a tall, dark, and handsome supernatural bladesmith not fall for a boring, plain-Jane heroine?…I guess not. And while I respected and admired her self-motivated pep talk she just it became repetitive and slightly annoying.So the pacing goes from lightning speed to super slow crawl. I understand that the first books in a series needs to have a good portion of the book dedicated to background information, world introduction, etc. But I honestly didn’t feel like I got a lot of that while in the forest with the trio of characters. And honestly we were in the forest for a ridiculously long time. I wanted more of Lily before death and less dilly-dallying in the forest on her first mission. But with a climactic ending I came away pretty satisfied. I also came away wanting more of this world. I’ve became super curious of H.P. Mallory’s other two series as well so I’m excited to get started and eager to read what happens in the second book of The Lily Harper series.**I received a copy of this from the author in exchange for an honest review**