Review--Grave Ransom by Kalayna Price

In the thrilling fifth book in the USA Today bestselling Alex Craft series, Alex comes face to face with the walking dead.

Grave witch Alex Craft is no stranger to the dead talking. She raises shades, works with ghosts, and is dating Death himself. But the dead walking? That’s not supposed to happen. And yet, reanimated corpses are committing crimes across Nekros City.

Alex’s investigation leads her deep into a web of sinister magic. When Briar Darque of the Magical Crimes Investigation Bureau gets involved, Alex finds herself with an unexpected ally of sorts. But as the dead continue to rise and wreak havoc on the living, can Alex get to the soul of the matter in time?

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review. 

I am happy to see that the Alex Craft series is back in action! Kalayna Price is an amazing author and I always love returning to her worlds. Grave Ransom is the latest adventure Alex and her friends partake in, and let me tell you, there are zombies!! Okay, they’re considered reanimated corpses, but come on, it’s zombies!!

Naturally I couldn’t really remember what’s happened with Alex lately. Even though I’m back on track with being a year in between reads, this was before my notorious notetaking! Thankfully, though we do get some continuance of personal details with characters, this is still a series where every book is a fresh start. At least in the continuity area, the series continues to have a one and done mystery per book with just a few little things that carry over through each book, so my memory loss isn’t the death of me with this one, thankfully! LOL!

Alex soon discovers that there’s someone around town who is raising shades and putting them into other dead bodies. Basically ghosts are inhabiting bodies that aren’t their own and are running errands for this mysterious necromancer. When Alex also takes a case to locate a missing person, a teenage boyfriend from the girlfriend who says he’s gone missing, she’ll quickly learn that the cases are related. And as more and more reanimated bodies continue to show up, committing crimes, no less, the hunt for the alleged necromancer takes underway.

I love how fresh and different this series is! It’s not like any other I’ve read before. And I read a lot of paranormal books! Lol! It’s sad to say that the Urban Fantasy genre is slowly dying down. It had its heyday a few years back and I was in heaven! And then suddenly the books all started coming out less and less. Sometimes it’s authors wanting to write something different after so many years and other times it’s due to low sales. This saddens me. I frequent between my YA and adult read and seeing a lack of Urban Fantasy books, the genre that I turned to once I saw a lack of Paranormal YA books, kills a piece of my soul. It’s just not fair. But I am pleased that I have series that are still in the running like the Alex Craft series!

This is Urban Fantasy at its purest! You have a kickbutt heroine who’s got a bit of snarky side—which is my personal favorite kind of trait, a world filled with magic, there’s ghosts, fae, Death! It has so many wonderful paranormal elements! The plots are always engaging and are always more than what they appear to be at surface glance! There’s great relationships between friends and lovers. Alex is still trying to make a relationship with Death work, while also knowing her former lover, Falin, still works for the faery queen! It’s rife with tension.

Also being Urban Fantasy, the romance and its many complications, is only a vague part of the story. And this is why I turned to Urban Fantasy all those years ago. I kept finding Paranormal Romance books and expected Urban Fantasy out of them instead they always surrounded the plot on the romance, here in Urban Fantasy the romance is merely an element of the story. Although, that being said, I was kind of upset Death wasn’t around more. Sure he’s busy being an agent of Death and all. And it’s not that I was looking for the “lovin” moments, but just Death himself. But as I recall he was an infrequent visitor to Alex’s life which can be a problem.

Alex continues to navigate her newfound fae nature (that might have been more than a few books back, but it does seem she’s still learning the ropes and is coming into her own) with her friends beside her. She’s adapted to some of the new things pretty well, though sometimes the urge to say “thank you” still comes up! I know I would likely never be able to get over that one! I was raised to be polite, what can I say?! LOL!

Grave Ransom is the latest in the incredible Urban Fantasy series, Alex Craft, by Kalanya Price! This is not one to be missed for it’s an epic and smashing read! I cannot wait to read more from this series as Kalayna has already been cemented as one of my favorite authors years ago with her other series Haven! 


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars