Book 20: Fifth Grave Past the Light by Darynda Jones
Book 20: Fifth Grave Past the Light (Charley Davidson #5).
Author: Darynda Jones, 2013.
Genre: Paranormal Romance. Urban Fantasy. Demons. Ghosts.
Other Details: Paperback. 339 pages.
The action picks up from Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet, which makes it hard to say too much without giving major spoilers for events in the previous books in the series. What I can say is that Charley is dealing with a number of cases including taking on what appears to be a quite standard PI case of determining if her client's husband is cheating and assisting on a police case involving an arsonist that started in Book 4. When a number of dead women keep showing up in Charley's apartment doing creepy things like spider-crawling up the walks she realises that they may be the victims of a serial killer. In addition, there is some advancement on the series arc that involves demons and hell portals.
While I understand the reason for this larger plot arc when heaven and hell, including demons and Lucifer, start getting pulled in it to a plot I feel like we are entering Supernatural territory. In this case it is odd as Charley's assistant Connie talks about watching Supernatural and the Winchester brothers 'hawtness' yet there is no reference to their on-going issues with the apocalypse and hell. Not even a remark from Charley about not watching the show because it is too much like reality TV.
I like the series and enjoy Charley's ongoing quips about life and pop culture though I do have any issue with how shallow all the women appear to be in Charley's world. Collectively they are like those women in the Diet Coke adverts, who sit around salivating about the shirtless man mowing the lawn. In this case it is Reyes Farrow who appears to have this effect on any woman with a pulse (and maybe without as well). Still I plan to continue with the series to see how things work out.
Excerpt - Fifth Grave Past the Light - also an 'About the Book' link but does contain spoilers for previous books.
Cross-posted to 50bookchallenge.