Scheduled for release 4/28/2011. Release dates are subject to change without notice.
My name is Amelia Gray. I’m a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I’ve always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe.
It started with the discovery of a young woman’s brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I’ve been hired to restore. The clues to the killer—and to his other victims— lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I’ve vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.
I don’t normally review ARC’s more than a week or so before the book’s release, but I was so in love with this book that I couldn’t resist.
Just. Wow.
I adored this book!
Alrighty, where to start?
Well, first off, this book is NOT a romance in the traditional sense. There is no HEA or even HFN, but please don’t let that put you off.
The ending is most definitely open-ended as far as any romance goes, and this is the first book in a trilogy, so there’s definitely some potential.
This book was most definitely spooky to the extreme. The descriptions of the ghosts and their interactions with Amelia are enough to make you want to sleep with the light on at night, especially if you have a drafty bedroom 
What worked for me:
* I loved the concept of Amelia being able to see ghosts, and all the family drama that comes with it, especially with the details that were not revealed, making me ready to devour future books in this trilogy as soon as I can get my greedy little hands on them.
* Devlin is the epitome of a tortured hero, without being too over-the-top.
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* The twist at the end! My jaw quite literally dropped in the last few chapters when I was blindsided by something that completely blew my mind. I usually pride myself on figuring out the twists in mystery novels, but Amanda Stevens is apparently a master at the twisty because I was completely taken aback by one of the reveals.
* I normally don’t like to read the first book in a series because there’s often so many unanswered questions that frustrate me, but Amanda Stevens somehow managed to keep plenty of secrets without making me want to pull my hair out.
What didn’t work for me:
* As a reader of “traditional romances”, I admit I was a little put-off that
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Like I said, I adored this book. I love the first-person POV, and Amanda Stevens kept me guessing until the end. The creepiness of the ghosts and their interaction with Amelia, the family issues and secrets that we only get to skim the surface of, and the thrilling “whodunit” combined made certain that I quite literally couldn’t put this one down.
A very solid 5/5 Stars
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