Summoned to Thirteenth Grave (Charley Davidson, #13)

by Darynda Jones

[Melanie]

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

Another series coming to an end (I had so many of them in 2018). The last Charley Davidson book. *sigh* I’ve known for a while that this was coming, but it doesn’t make it any less bittersweet. I’m glad to see Charley fight the battle that she knew was hers to fight and doing it with all of her friends and family around her.

As with the books in the past, this one has two sort of plots. One is the overarching story arc for the series. The second is the mystery that she’s working to solve and resolve in this one book.

In this one, she’s got a young child departed that is following her around. He sounds so cute as she talks about him peeking at her around the corner. Charley works to find out what has happened to this young boy. And she’s doing that while trying to figure out why demons are coming onto this plan and making humans go nuts. Oh, and she only has 3 days to save the world. No pressure, right? Just another day in the life of Charley Davidson.

I’m not going to go into much more detail so as to avoid spoilers. It was great to see the whole gang again. Pretty much everyone gets a little bit of page time. We learn more about Rocket (poor Rocket, I felt so bad for him). We also learn a bit more about Charley’s mom, but I would’ve liked to know more. There is a big twist that we learn about a character towards the end of the book (I won’t say more than that).

There were a few issues for me. It is hard for me to explain and not give a lot of spoilers, so just know that there are some issues, but that overall, I loved the story. I will warn you, this ends in a bit of a cliffhanger. No, that’s not the right word. I’m not sure what the right word would be. It does leave you hanging for the next step in this world (a spinoff series to follow Beep’s story). That niggled at me a bit too. I’m still giving it four stars, because I even with my niggles, I really enjoyed my time with Charley and the gang. This book is filled with the humor, mystery and action that I’ve come to expect from a Charley Davidson book.If you haven’t tried this series, start with First Grave on the Right. This is not a series to be read out of order, but a fun world to experience.

Narration
Lorelei King continues to nail the narration. I don’t know what I can say that I haven’t said before. King is one of my favorite narrators. She does all parts of narration extremely well. If you haven’t tried her yet, I highly recommend her.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.