The Dirt on Ninth Graveby Darynda Jones
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250074485
Series: Charlie Davidson #9
Publication Date: January 16, 2016
Pages: 326
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Charley Davidson is living in New York City as Jane Doe, a girl with no memory of who she is or where she came from. So when she begins to realize she can see dead people, she’s more than a bit taken aback. Strangers who enter the diner where she works seem to know things about her…Then she is confronted by a man who claims to have been sent to kill her. Sent by the darkest force in the universe. An enemy that will not stop until she is dead. Thankfully, she has a Rottweiler. And the diner’s devastatingly handsome fry cook, who vows to protect her even though he seems to be lying with every breath he takes. But in the face of such grave danger, who can Jane/Charley/whoever she is trust? She will find the truth even if it kills her…or the fry cook. Either way…
My personal health reality includes sleeping medications, so I rarely suffer from anything that could be called insomnia. Except on very rare occasions when they fail, and last night they failed spectacularly – I never went to sleep. I finally started to nod off when MT’s alarm went off and I briefly contemplated instigating a domestic disturbance.
The good news – I guess – is that I finished The Dirt on Ninth Grave in one sitting. I was engrossed enough in the story to not want to put it down, but I’d have preferred not feeling like a zombie on toast today.
I definitely, thoroughly, enjoyed this book but I liked it the least of the nine books so far. It was the amnesia thing. We finally got to a place in the story arc where we had answers and a clear goal in site and then this book comes along and we’re temporarily rebooted to Charley not knowing anything. I thought this would only last a few chapters… maybe half the book at the outside, but nope: Charley doesn’t snap out of it until the end.
I saved this book until The Curse of Tenth Grave was released because I’d read from several places that Ninth Grave ended on a cliffhanger. I’ll argue this ending isn’t a cliffhanger though, because the action comes to an end; the story is paused. A major story-arc plot twist is revealed, but it’s more a ‘how will this affect the arc’ twist, rather than ‘ohmigod is someone gonna die in chapter 1 of book 10?!?’.
…I think. Thankfully, I have the next book sitting here waiting, so I can find out. After I take a nap.
(I might use this book as the Book with a terrible cover Summer Book Bingo square. It’s not objectively terrible, but I don’t like it.)