Kalayna Price

Alex Craft has been made an independent fae for a year and a day which gives her some time to figure out how to make her independent status permanent. Now, she and her partner Rianna are trying to establish their private investigation business. Alex is trying to limit the amount of shades she raises because a side effect of her magical talent is blindness. She has already lost her night vision and the bouts of blindness after raising shades are getting longer and her vision isn't bouncing show more back.

When she and Tamara are lunching and she sees a dead man walking she has found her next puzzle. Following him reveals even more of mystery. He's on his way to rob a magical museum of a magical artifact but Alex, who ends up caught with him in a trap, learns that there is a soul in his body. Releasing it shows her that it isn't his soul but before she can question the ghost a soul collector claims it. Alex is left with a dead body and questions from the police.

She also has business. One couple wants to hire her to find the ghost of their six-year-old daughter who died of a blood disease. Alex tries to convince them that most souls move on and only those with compelling reasons become ghosts. They aren't eager to accept this and leave in a huff. Her next client is high school senior Tiffany who is looking for her missing boyfriend Remy. While Alex thinks it is most likely that this was Remy's way to break up with his high school girlfriend, she takes the case and asks Rianna to make a tracing spell.

Meanwhile, Briar Darque has come to hang around with Alex because her partner has a premonition that something is going to happen. Since prior occasions when Briar showed up put Alex in a lot of danger, she's hoping the premonition is wrong. Briar is under the impression that a necromancer - a very illegal kind of magic - is working in Nekros City.

The tracking spell leads Alex all over Nekros City and the surrounding area. She wonders if it is working correctly when it seems to be leading her in two directions. Finally, she finds Remy's body in the midst of a bank robbery but the soul isn't Remy's. Before she can question the ghost, soul collectors arrive and send it on. This is setting up a major conflict between Alex and her boyfriend Death who is a soul collector.

This is the book when Alex's relationship with Death comes to a crisis point. They haven't a way to reconcile their very different needs and responsibilities. This is hard for Alex because she has known Death since she was five. Long before he became her lover, he was her confidant and best friend.

This was a great episode in this series. Alex is learning new things about her new and rather unique power. show less

Whenever the first book in a series is really good, I am both leery and excited to start the second. It is hard to imagine that the next book can be just as good, if not better, than the first. And there are plenty of series where the second book simply falls short. This series, is not the case

From beginning to end, Kalayna Price pulls the reader into Alex's story and makes you want to never stop reading. Who is Alex really? Is she human? Is she fae? Or both? Who is Falin? What is going on show more with Death? Is her old best friend the one causing all the trouble?

I absolutely loved the plot twist at the end of the book. I adore books where I am surprised. If I can figure out what will happen, I get bored. This is one of many reasons why I loved this book.

The only part that I am not fond of is the love triangle going on with Falin and Death. Alex needs to make up her mind and stop leading them both on. Although she is not actively leading them on, by not telling them to stop, she is encouraging their infatuations. She needs to decide who she has feelings for and let that be the end of it.

5/5 stars for me and I cannot wait to read the third book! show less

Alex Craft is a grave witch. She can speak to the dead. In fact, she is set to make a witness appear from beyond the grave at a groundbreaking court trial. She needs the work. Her rent is overdue, her refrigerator is empty, and her Chinese Crested's vet bill for a broken leg still needs to be paid.

When she gets a call from her estranged sister to see if she can check out her boyfriend's shade to find out who killed him, she finds herself deep into a long-running fae plot. Her sister's show more boyfriend was the governor of Necros. She gets into the morgue by way of her friend John who is a homicide detective. He wants help identifying a body from a body dump. While she's there she'll get a look at the body her sister is interested in.

John's corpse rises screaming but Alex recognizes her as a fellow student at the wyrd academy her father sent her to when he disowned her because of her witchcraft. After all, her father is a leading proponent of the Humans First party in Necros and, since his daughter's boyfriend's death, he's the new governor.

At the morgue she also becomes haunted herself by a ghost who is claiming that the former governor stole his body twelve years ago. She also gets hit with a soul-stealing curse. And she meets the Falin Andrews who is a man of mystery in charge of the investigation into the governor's death.

This was an interesting urban fantasy mystery as she works with Falin to find out about the body stealing entity who impersonated the governor and is now in someone else's body. She has until the full moon to find the impersonator or she'll die and the impersonator's plan with bring devastation to Necros.

I liked Alex. I liked that using her grave magic had a cost. Using it too much makes her blind and has totally ruined her night vision. I liked that she learned some new things about herself and her family. I liked her relationship with Falin and her relationship with Death who is a collector of souls. show less

Funny, sexy, entertaining, a good mystery that you won't be able to parse out before it's revealed, magic, great world building, few inconsistencies...overall a clear five star read. I'm definitely excited to continue this series.

"'Well,' he said, 'I'm glad to see you're finally taking some precautions, but you weren't this tense when I dropped you off last night.'
'But you were this annoying. At least one of us is consistent.'"