Helpful Score: 1
I read the novella The Abandoned about a month ago (e-book is free at this time on Amazon!) and the world that Amanda Stevens has created caught me and would not let go. I became so obsessed I finally had to drop everything I was reading to pick up The Restorer. This is an interesting, creepy, beautifully written book which I ate up in two days and still feel a little desperate to read more. I love books like that.
Amelia Gray can see ghosts, just like her adopted father. (Something weird there!) He has taught her four rules, all to keep her safe from hungry spirits who want what they no longer have, life. These four rules basically are to act as though you cannot see the ghosts and to stay far away from people who are personally haunted, ghosts hang around certain people and slowly feed off their warmth and vitality until there is nothing left but a shell of a person. Amelia is a cemetery restorer and working on a cemetery in Charleston where a murderer has left a dead body. Enter handsome and alluring John Devlin, a police detective and a man haunted by two ghosts. Amelia is pulled into working with him even though it is breaking one of her Papas rules, because she feels a deep pull towards him Id come here in the pursuit of the forbidden, though I had never done anything remotely reckless in my whole life. But we also find out from a lot of foreshadowing that things will never be the same for her again. Dun dun dun!!
It really is creepy. The setting is gorgeous, gothic and ethereal. Everything is in first person from Amelias POV. There are a bunch of characters whose motivation we dont understand and act like they are hiding something. There is a secret society implicated in a murder from 15 years before and possible connections between the current murderer and symbols on gravestones. There is also a dark evil entity in the woods. And after all that she throws out lines like, I was oblivious to the creak of my garden gate, the howl of my neighbors dog and the eyes that gleamed with madness peering in through my bedroom window as I slept. Gack! Thank goodness it was light out night when I read that!
The murder mystery is good, there is romance and longing and the action heats up, but the best part for me was the trail of breadcrumbs we are given about the people and places in Amelia's life. The detective Devlin and his past, her mother and father, her own abilities, Dr. Shaw, Temple and the settings themselves, both the graveyards and Charleston...these are fascinating people and places whom we don't know a lot about, but Steven's gives us just enough to tantalize so I want to read and know more. Steven's has perfected the art of giving her reader just enough to entice, enthrall and leave you wanting for more without it being too witholding. There are a lot of little mysteries left unknown at the end of The Restorer and I am excited to read The Kingdom to find out what is revealed! I give this book 4.5 stars. It really got under my skin!
Amelia Gray can see ghosts, just like her adopted father. (Something weird there!) He has taught her four rules, all to keep her safe from hungry spirits who want what they no longer have, life. These four rules basically are to act as though you cannot see the ghosts and to stay far away from people who are personally haunted, ghosts hang around certain people and slowly feed off their warmth and vitality until there is nothing left but a shell of a person. Amelia is a cemetery restorer and working on a cemetery in Charleston where a murderer has left a dead body. Enter handsome and alluring John Devlin, a police detective and a man haunted by two ghosts. Amelia is pulled into working with him even though it is breaking one of her Papas rules, because she feels a deep pull towards him Id come here in the pursuit of the forbidden, though I had never done anything remotely reckless in my whole life. But we also find out from a lot of foreshadowing that things will never be the same for her again. Dun dun dun!!
It really is creepy. The setting is gorgeous, gothic and ethereal. Everything is in first person from Amelias POV. There are a bunch of characters whose motivation we dont understand and act like they are hiding something. There is a secret society implicated in a murder from 15 years before and possible connections between the current murderer and symbols on gravestones. There is also a dark evil entity in the woods. And after all that she throws out lines like, I was oblivious to the creak of my garden gate, the howl of my neighbors dog and the eyes that gleamed with madness peering in through my bedroom window as I slept. Gack! Thank goodness it was light out night when I read that!
The murder mystery is good, there is romance and longing and the action heats up, but the best part for me was the trail of breadcrumbs we are given about the people and places in Amelia's life. The detective Devlin and his past, her mother and father, her own abilities, Dr. Shaw, Temple and the settings themselves, both the graveyards and Charleston...these are fascinating people and places whom we don't know a lot about, but Steven's gives us just enough to tantalize so I want to read and know more. Steven's has perfected the art of giving her reader just enough to entice, enthrall and leave you wanting for more without it being too witholding. There are a lot of little mysteries left unknown at the end of The Restorer and I am excited to read The Kingdom to find out what is revealed! I give this book 4.5 stars. It really got under my skin!
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