Review--E-ARC The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE THE DEAD.

NEVER STRAY FROM HALLOWED GROUND.

NEVER GET CLOSE TO THE HAUNTED.

NEVER, EVER TEMPT FATE.

My father’s rules.

I’ve never broken them…until now.

My name is Amelia Gray. I’m a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I’ve always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe.

It started with the discovery of a young woman’s brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I’ve been hired to restore. The clues to the killer—and to his other victims— lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I’ve vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.

I received this e-ARC courtesy of NetGalley for review

Amanda Stevens' The Restorer was sort of different from what I was expecting. I was thinking mystery with ghostly interactions which it was in some ways, just not as much as I thought. There were ghostly appearances and there was still a murder mystery to solve, just the ghosts weren't a major part of it like I had hoped.

Amelia restores graveyards and yet she can see ghosts as well. She has always followed her father's rules for her could see them too, these rules would keep her safe for ghosts would draw on her energy if she were to acknowledge them. So she has ignored them to the best of her abilities. But that isn't her only concern now. While restoring a graveyard she suddenly comes across an out of place body which soon leads to more bodies to be discovered in the graveyard where they do not belong.

That is where the handsome detective Delvin comes in. Only he too is being haunted by ghosts and he isn't aware of it. To make matters worse it's the ghost of his deceased wife and child. And the wife obviously isn't too thrilled with Amelia's interactions with her husband.

The pacing was a bit slow for my liking, yet the mystery was still decent. We watch as Amelia goes from place to place trying to help piece together the mystery and find the killer. She isn't actively determined to solve the case, she starts as a consultant and her researching leads her to other clues and more mishaps that soon mark her as a target for the killer.

There is a bit of romantic tension between Amelia and Devlin, the continues to build throughout the book, but at the end we still aren't sure where they stand, only that they will continue to be connected for something else will draw them together in the next book, as Amelia sort of states at the end as well.

Overall I have to rate this as a 3/5 stars. It was good, I felt compelled to finish it when I might have stopped somewhere past the halfway mark because I felt like there wasn't a whole lot of moving forward. In the end I've come to feel very middle ground on this book, neither loving or hating it. So if you're looking for an interesting mystery to read this one fits the bill, but I;m not sure if I would recommend reading this right away if you're not totally wow-ed by the BOC description.

This title will release on April 19, 2011