 | Title: Graveminder
 Sexual Content: Vague references to rape. A scene of sensuality. Rating:
Good - A fun read with minor flaws. Maybe read an excerpt before buying. |
Description
The New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series delivers her first novel for adults, a story about the living, the dead, and a curse that binds them.
Three sips to mind the dead . . .
Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral that Maylene didn't attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."
Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soon discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in Claysville the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected; beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D. If the dead are not properly cared for, they will come back to satiate themselves with food, drink, and stories from the land of the living. Only the Graveminder, by tradition a Barrow woman, and her Undertaker—in this case Byron Montgomery, with whom Bek shares a complicated past—can set things right once the dead begin to walk.
Although she is still grieving for Maylene, Rebekkah will soon find that she has more than a funeral to attend to in Claysville, and that what awaits her may be far worse: dark secrets, a centuries-old bargain, a romance that still haunts her, and a frightening new responsibility—to stop a monster and put the dead to rest where they belong.
Review
GRAVEMINDER is the adult debut for YA Paranormal queen Melissa Marr, a very slow building gothic/horror mystery, almost like the movie The Village. There is a small, quaint town populated with mysterious characters most of whom seem to be in on a Big Secret: the dead don’t always stay dead. A legacy, passed down from generation to generation, binds two families to the town in order to magically protect the rest.
The main idea in GRAVEMINDER is fantastic with a big nod to the Hades and Persephone myth. But Marr takes it a step further and creates her own very unique folklore by imagining two complimentary roles: The Graveminder and the Undertaker. Both mythologies work well and really serve to inject the story with a fresh yet seemingly historical context. It was easily my favorite thing about the book.
I did get impatient with the pace and the fact that Rebekkah and Bryan had only one conversation that they just repeated throughout the book (Him: Admit you love me! Her: I can’t, I’m still hung up on my sisters/your ex girlfriend’s death). It made their relationship feel very stale to me. We learn throughout the story exactly what brought them together and then drove them apart, but unfortunately, it felt more like an obligatory romantic obstacle rather that a real emotional feat that I could invest in, and given their situation, it could have been.
Another miss for me was the ‘shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D.’ It was kinda cheesy and felt almost like a different story. There was all this build up about the mystery and the town curse that when that part of it was revealed, I was disappointed. It didn’t have the same gothic horror vibe as the rest of the story and I couldn’t wait to get back to Claysville. Fortunately, that’s what happened and the story finished strong.
Overall, GRAVEMINDER is a big departure for Melissa Marr that is mostly successful. The gothic mystery along with Marr’s easy writing style hooked me and pulled me into to this cursed town, but the romance was repetitive and the reveal was a bit of a let down. Marr fans will want to check it out as well as anyone who enjoys small town mysteries with a supernatural twist. So what’s next for this world? GRAVEMINDER has already been optioned for a television show by Ken Olin (Alias and Brothers & Sisters), and Melissa has confirmed that she’s working on a sequel.
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