The Visitor (The Graveyard Queen, #4)

by Amanda Stevens

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

The Visitor may have been the creepiest installment in this series and that’s saying a lot. Like The Kingdom, it explored another side of Amelia’s heritage. Believe it or not, The Visitor had a creepier angle than The Kingdom. Creepy or spooky is the perfect way to describe Stevens’ writing. It’s not necessarily outright scary. It’s never caused me to stay awake at night. But I definitely get spooked while listening.

Amanda Stevens has atmospheric writing down to a science. Curiously enough, the graveyard scenes are among the less spooky. For Amelia, cemeteries are a place of peace. She makes a point of emphasizing that she believes it’s people who are haunted, not places. Therefore, the hauntings can happen anywhere. Stevens also excels at using the five senses to enhance the experience of having a sixth sense. Amelia’s sightings are often accompanied by particular scents (like cloves, in The Visitor) and/or sounds, sometimes even physical sensations.

The Visitor was my second least favorite installment in this series and yet it divulges critical information about Amelia’s heritage and her gift. However, the unfolding of that information felt somewhat fumbly. No matter how much I adore Amanda Stevens’ ability to create such richly tangible settings, I still find her storytelling ability to be slightly subpar. It feels like she struggles to find balance between world building/character development (which she does amazingly) and plot progression. This causes almost all of her endings to seem rushed and thrown together. But by the time I finished The Visitor, I knew I was too far into the series to turn back. On to the next…