Monday, March 4, 2019

CBR11 #4:Pretending to Care - The Pretenders (Cemetery Girl #1) by Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden

I wanted to like this, but...I just didn't. I don't know if it was too short, or whether it would have more appeal for a YA audience, but I was just kind of bored.

 Calexa Rose finds herself dumped in a graveyard, with no memory of her identity, and only the knowledge that someone tried to kill her. She can also see ghosts. She makes herself at home in the cemetery, trying to hide out from whomever tried to kill her, while attempting to find out who she is. She steals some stuff. She develops uncomfortable friendships with some old people. She spends a lot of time running around, leaping over stuff, and wearing a veil. One night, she witnesses a crime. Then she has to decide what to do about what she saw. Can she manage to see that justice is done without exposing herself? The antagonist characters are extremely one-dimensional, as well as kind of stupid. Their motivations don't really make any sense. And while this is in theory a ghost story, there was only one ghost, and even she was boring. How does a cemetery only have ONE restless ghost? Maybe the format doesn't allow for much expansion, and I should have waited for an omnibus, rather than reading this book as a stand-alone, but it did nothing for me. The art was fine, but nothing stunning or particularly unusual. I really like both Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden's other work, so this was a major disappointment.

No comments:

CBR14 #1 - Revenge Body by Rachel Wiley

Cannonball Read #14. Hope springs eternal, I guess.  I have to say that Rachel Wiley is probably my favorite living poet. I've been a fa...