Eleventh Grave in Moonlight

A few weeks past its release date, let’s talk about Eleventh Grave in Moonlight by Darynda Jones. This is the 11th book in the Charley Davidson series (um, obviously – all books have super helpful numbers in the title so there is no confusion as to the order of things). Eleventh Grave is another one of those I-pre-ordered-this-and-marked-my-calendar type of books.

Granted, the book last week was that same type of book. And I didn’t exactly love that one. I hate when things don’t live up to expectation. Even though I fully realize my interpretation of the book will not match everyone’s opinion, it’s just so sad when something falls flat. But – there is redemption to be found in this Eleventh Grave!

Book cover

For those of you not familiar with this series, Charley Davidson is – among other things – a Private Investigator who happens to be the Grim Reaper. Charley has a deep love for all things coffee, a penchant for getting into sticky situations, and an unwavering desire to help people. She also has a core circle of people whom she relies on:

  • Uncle Bob, who is a police detective;
  • Cookie, a frazzled woman who is her secretary and best friend and recently married to Uncle Bob;
  • Amber, Cookie’s daughter who has a few supernatural gifts of her own;
  • Garrett, a PI and skip-tracer with an interest in supernatural research and trailing people;
  • Osh, a soul-eating demon who escaped to earth and will do anything to see the fall of Satan;
  • and Reyes, Charley’s supernatural husband who, among other things, is the son of Satan.

Full disclosure: I love this series. It is funny, sarcastic, witty, exciting, sexy . . . it is consistently great. I may or may not have a Charley Davidson key-chain.

Every book is a new adventure and Charley always tries to balance one or two PI investigations with her more personal adventures. So, technically I suppose, you could read this as a standalone book (although, really, just read them all and thank me later). The author does a great job of giving very high-level introductions to each character at the start of each book. She gives enough so that you know (or remember) who the characters are, but not so much that you have to read pages of backstory. And each book is funny – this is a series where I have to physically stop myself from laughing out loud while reading it for fear that my husband will think I am crazier than I actually am.

In Eleventh Grave, Charley is helping a FBI friend with a case that centers on Reyes’ first set of “adoptive” parents. While investigating and trying to determine exactly what kind of wrong they’re involved with, she’s also trying to master her newly-realized powers: turns out she’s a pretty powerful supernatural entity. Oh, and Charley and Reyes have a daughter (being raised secretly by Reyes’ actual parents) who is predicted to defeat Satan, so hell is pretty determined to eliminate whoever they can to prevent such a thing from happening. So, lots of things going on – pretty typical for a Charley Davidson book.

Eleventh Grave is not the most exciting story in the series. It isn’t the craziest, the funniest, or the most OMG-iest (not a word, I know, but really that’s a pretty accurate descriptor). But it works, and it works well. At first, I thought, “oh, this is a little less awesome than some of the others”. Then I got to the end of the book and I thought “holy crap, what just happened!?!”

meme

In retrospect, this book gave deeper insights to who the characters are at their core, what they’re truly capable of, and how they really feel about certain things. They communicated more than they had in prior books and we – as readers – are able to learn more about who they are as people, as fully developed characters. Then the “holy crap” moment at the end happens and it seems this whole book exists to set the groundwork for the next book, The Trouble with Twelfth Grave, which comes out on Halloween (October 31, 2017).

And, let’s admit it: one reason we all love this series is because the quotes and t-shirts used as chapter headings are hilarious.

I loved this book and can’t wait to see where Darynda takes the story next!

Also, if anyone knows where I can find the boots on the cover of this book, please let me know.

Overall: 9/10

Discussion

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