Graveminder

Three sips to mind the dead...

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed ipon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral Maylene didn't attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soo discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in Claysville the worlds of the living and the dead and dangerously connected; beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles aka Mr.D. If the dead are not properly cared for, they will come back to satiate themselves with food, drink, and stories from the land of the living. Only the Graveminder, by tradition a Barrow woman, and her Undertaker - in this case Byron Montgomery, with whom Bek shares a complicated past - can put things right once the dead begin to walk.

Although she is still grieving for Maylene, Rebekkah will soon find that she has more than a funeral to attend to in Claysville, and that wait awaits her may be for the worse: dark secrets, a centuries old bargin, a romance that still haunts her, and a frighteningly new responsibility - to stop a monster and put the dead to rest where they belong.

I loved Melissa Marss YA series The Wicked Lovely books, so I was interested to read her first adult novel. I must admit that for an adult novel it was really quite clean...there was some language, but there was not in your face sex scenes (finally)! And I have to admit that when I first started reading I got a little creeped out...and then I couldn't stop reading!!

Bek is as dysfunctional as they come! She has an insane fear of commitment, and is in denial of her feelings for Byron. Ah, Byron...Bek has a guilt complex over her feelings for him because he was her older half sisters boyfriend...that is until she took her own life. Bek thinks it is because of a kiss that she and Byron shared that Ella took her life...if only! There were a few times where I found Bek annoying and overly angsty, but the rock steadiness of Byron more than made up for it.

The story was interesting and intriguing! A town with an ancient bargin that if that dead are taken care of properly they can rise again...yes were talking full fledged ZOMBIES!! Bek and Byron are more than surprised by these revelations and by their new responsibilities as Graveminder and Undertaker...not to mention the whole relationship thing!

I am glad to know that there is a sequel to this book...there were a lot of things left to make you wonder about! The mysterious Mr.D...the bargin and can it be broken...and of course the relationship between Byron and Bek.

I am not really a fan of ghost stories or zombies AT ALL! But this book was really too good to put down!

I gave this book 5 apples!