The Dirt on Ninth Grave (Charley Davidson, #9)

by Darynda Jones

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

In this story we have Charley waking up with retrograde amnesia. She doesn’t know who she is or anything about her past. It has been about a month and she is working in a diner in Sleepy Hollow, New York. All of her friends and family have joined her, but they haven’t told her they know who she is. Charley’s sister Gemma warned that it would be too hard on her to force the memories back on her. Charley needed to come back to herself in own time.

It was fun to see that Charley was “Charley” no matter what. It did take her a bit to figure out her powers. She wasn’t sure about the fact that she really could see dead people. She was also very scared to tell anyone about it, scared she would end up in a straight jacket, who wouldn’t?? Watching her learn how she stopped time and how to deal with it was kinda fun. I’m sure I would be the same way. In awe and terrified at the same time.

She also got the chance to fall in love with Reyes all over again. Who wouldn’t want that chance? She got to go through those wonderful times of early love all over again. It wasn’t all hearts and flowers at first. She did see the darkest in Reyes and it scared her. She also saw the anger in him, which is also scary.

Watching all of the secondary characters that we know and love tiptoe around Charley trying not to reveal who they are to her, all while Charley can sense their emotions was hilarious. Not to mention, she can tell when someone is outright lying. Garrett, Osh, Cookie, UB (or Bobert as Charley calls him while she doesn’t know him), Swoops are all there. Angel even made the trip to keep an eye on Charley.

One thing I also enjoyed was the secondary characters we got to meet in this story. The fact that this took place in New York instead of New Mexico, means that we had to have a whole new cast of characters. There is Dixie the diner owner. There are the other diner workers in Lewis, Erin and Shayla.

Charley also works on two different cases that proves that she is a PI at heart. One that is police related and one that is departed related. She just can’t help but to help people who are in trouble. She also has a departed that she must help as well. We also learn that animals can be departed too.

This is a classic Charley Davidson story. It will make you laugh and cry. Even though this story Charley spent most of the story as Janey Doerr, it was still a fun story.

Narration
Lorelei King once again nails the narration of this series. She had to do some Russian accents in this one. She continues to pull of the snark that is characteristic of a Charley Davidson book. Add to that, she is also great with the parts that are also not snarky. She brings to the table whatever is needed for that scene and does it flawlessly. This is will always be a straight to audio series for me. If you haven’t tried it on audio yet, you don’t know what you’re missing.