Rating:
Alice Moore has an ability to see the dead, which she used many times to help grieving families find peace or debunk fake hauntings. Now, her and her boyfriend were hired by Roman Ellis, a fellow ghost hunter, to investigate the haunting of a Florida plantation house. The problem is their new boss is not exactly an honest person. However, after being wrongly accused of blackmail and spending six months in prison Alice is desperate for money so she reluctantly accepts the offer. When she gets there things quickly fall apart as she stumbles over a dead body and, because of her record, immediately becomes the main suspect.
I loved this book at the beginning. Cozy mysteries often start with the main character moving back to a small town, usually after a bad breakup. Alice is, however, happily in love. She is trying to rebuild her life after prison. Also, she is an orphan and after being framed she is learning to trust people, starting with her boyfriend, the grandson of the very woman who set her up, no less. This is such an interesting start to a book and I couldn’t wait to read more.
Alice is set to appear on a ghost hunting TV show which gives us an interesting look into all the behind the scenes drama, especially in the supposedly supernatural program.
The main character is only 24 so the simple writing style and use of slang are appropriate.
On top of that, there are references to the author’s other series following Fiona Fleming. I read the first book of that series and, while it wasn’t my favorite, it was nice to recognize some names and places. A character from the series even shows up here, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, these references kept happening throughout the whole book and it became a little jarring. It seems the character of Alice was first introduced over there before getting her own story so it makes sense that she would occasionally mention someone from her past, but this was just too much.
And that’s the problem – I like this book a lot at the beginning, but after a while it became…boring? I still wanted to keep reading, don’t get me wrong, but things were not exciting even when the murder happened and the investigation started. All the elements were there: an interesting setup, multiple suspects, personal drama mixed with the police case, but somehow I didn’t feel connected to any of it.
The book is barely 150 pages long, but it felt like a chore.
Also, I expected the main character’s gift to be a much bigger part of the story than it was. Of course, there would be no story if a ghost just gave her a solution to the mystery, but it would have been more interesting if it provided some piece of information she wouldn’t have been able to acquire otherwise. For example, it could help her fin a murder weapon or tell her what happened which she could than use to get the confession.
When I started reading this book I genuinely thought it could be a 5 star read, but unfortunately everything went down hill. Nothing was really bad, but nothing stood out either and I ended up being pretty disappointed. Still, the series has a potential and I’d be interested to see where things go from here, especially if Alice uses her powers more.