I thoroughly enjoy the series. A bit sad about the ending, but...who knows ( )

This series is one of those outliers that I continue to really like even though I can easily point out several ... I don't want to call them flaws, so let's just call them weaknesses. But I love the characters and the setting, so even when things don't work, or the author makes decisions I don't necessarily like, I still enjoy the story.

Grave Ransom is about zombies, as luck would have it (Halloween Bingo square!), and I generally feel petty meh about zombies, but for Alex and her friends, I could deal with zombies. It also helped that these sentient zombies, not the BRAINS! eating type (although there were plenty of those at the end). One particularly wrenching scene in the middle of the book where one vicim comes to terms with his situation added a bit of depth to what otherwise might have been a simple paranormal killing spree.

But I have to say I didn't much care for the ending; Price is playing tin soldiers with Alex's love life, and the plot itself didn't feel quite tied up enough to satisfy me; I'd have liked to have known how the 'bad guys' met; I was left with questions after their dastardly plot was revealed and they didn't all get answered.

In spite of that, I had a great time reading the book; these are always fun and never a chore to pick up; I hope the author continues to bring Alex and her friends to the page for some time to come. ( )

Loved it

I really like this series and hope there are a lot more books. This story was exciting as usual but also an inevitable ending had to happen so there was some unhappy closure. Not to reveal too much, it was inevitable, I think... ( )

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 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. ( )

GRAVE RANSOM was a decently strong continuation of the Alex Craft series. I really enjoy the fact that Alex is always working a case in each installment of the series. I like that it is always connected to her roots and that the author hasn't introduced crazy things that leads Alex down crazy paths that don't fit the character that she started out as.

I liked learning about Alex's new home. It was interesting to see how things worked in her new space and who fit into it. They have some kinks to work out to keep people from learning about it, but it was fun watching them scramble a little bit to make some things work. It was very unique all around and I look forward to learning more.

Alex's love life is on the fritz in GRAVE RANSOM, but I have felt like it was a bit broken for a while now. I'm not quite sure how I feel about Death anymore. He hasn't done anything really, I just haven't felt their connection in a while. I am interested to see how Kalayna Price proceeds at this point on that front.

The ending of GRAVE RANSOM was crazy suspenseful. There were a lot of twists thrown into book five and I'm not quite sure where some of them will leave Alex and her friends in the future. Hopefully we don't have to wait forever to find out!

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )