All Things Halloween Review - Eighth Grave After Dark

Eighth Grave After Dark (Charley Davidson, # 8)

By: Darynda Jones

Publication: May 19th 2015 by St. Martin's Press

293 pages

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Mystery

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

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Goodreads description--With twelve hellhounds after her, pregnant Charley Davidson takes refuge at the only place she thinks they can’t get to her: the grounds of an abandoned convent. But after months of being cooped up there, Charley is ready to pop. Both metaphorically and literally since she is now roughly the size of a beached whale. Fortunately, a new case has captured her attention, one that involves a murder on the very grounds the team has taken shelter upon. A decades-old murder of the newly-vowed nun she keeps seeing in the shadows is almost enough to pull her out of her doldrums.

Charley’s been forbidden to step foot off the sacred grounds. While the angry hellhounds can’t traverse the consecrated soil, they can lurk just beyond its borders. They have the entire team on edge, especially Reyes. And if Charley didn’t know better, she would swear Reyes is getting sick. He grows hotter with every moment that passes, his heat scorching across her skin every time he’s near, but naturally he swears he’s fine.

While the team searches for clues on the Twelve, Charley just wants answers and is powerless to get them. But the mass of friends they’ve accrued helps. They convince her even more that everyone in her recent life has somehow been drawn to her, as though they were a part of a bigger picture all along. But the good feelings don’t last for long because Charley is about to get the surprise of her crazy, mixed-up, supernatural life….

I had to take a short break between book 7 and this one. But the break didn't stop me from getting into Eighth Grave After Dark almost immediately. I was slightly thrown off by the time jump as all of the previous books are almost immediately one after the other. It's been eight months from where the last book left off. The time jump makes sense as the characters have been stuck on sacred ground for that time and it would be quite the boring book for them to never be able to leave for months. As it was, Eighth Grave After Dark does advance the overall storyline and Charley does have a mystery to solve (even from the safety of the convent). Yet it felt like not much was happening... probably due to the exact fact that Charley couldn't leave the convent.

I mentioned this before, but I love the pop culture references without name dropping. Name dropping always feels as if the author is trying too hard to be current, cool, or trendy. The way Darynda Jones does them is just right.

I've also mentioned this before, but I do get frustrated with the amount of information that's kept from Charley at times. She gets frustrated too. But since this has been going on for several books (or well...all of them) I'm a little beyond this being a plot tool.

I will also say that the alternate dimension pieces have increased and are getting so prevalent that I'm beginning to get a little frustrated. For some reason, this concept is something that I've always struggled with books. I hope that this doesn't cause me to lose interest in the series since I'm known to struggle with this type of thing.

Several things happened at the end of the book that has me excited about what's to come. Ultimately, Eighth Grave After Dark was probably my least favorite of the series so far. I still enjoyed it, but I certainly had more issues with this book than any of the prior ones. Eighth Grave After Dark gets 3.5 Stars. Have you read Eighth Grave After Dark? What did you think?

This review is part of my All Things Halloween event--a month of paranormal, supernatural, mystery/thriller, etc reviews and books.