Steph Reviews Grave Visions by Kalayna Price

Publisher: Roc
Series: Alex Craft #4
Format Read: ARC paperback
Source: From the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 2, 2016
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | Barnes & Noble
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Blurb from goodreads:

Grave Visions by Kalayna Price is the much-anticipated fourth installment in the kick-ass urban fantasy series about Alex Craft, a grave witch who can communicate with the dead.

If you want to hear voices from the dead in Nekros City, you call Alex Craft. She's a Grave Witch with reasonable rates and extraordinary powers, who specializes in revealing the secrets of the dead. But now she's the one fighting to keep her own secret. She's not human—and her newly discovered heritage is causing havoc for her both in the human realm and in Faerie. But her status as an unaffiliated fae also makes her an ideal candidate to investigate a new street drug that has surfaced in several of the spaces between the human and fae worlds.

This glamour-infused drug causes hallucinations that turn real—at least for a while and often with deadly consequences. Searching for the source of this drug—and its purpose—lands Alex front and center in the conflict brewing in Faerie and she must find answers before she's dragged so deep she loses her freedom.

Steph's Thoughts:

*Spoilers for previous books*


 

Grave Visions is the fourth book in this series. I was sent all four books at once so I did not have the long wait that most readers of this series experienced.

After reading all four books over the course of a couple of months, I am going middle of the road on this series. I liked the first book. It was a solid read with a likable character but by book 4, I was ready to beat Alex with a stick. She is involved with two men, neither of which she is able to have a real relationship with. Death is a reaper and could kill her at any time and Falin is the lover of a Fae Queen. Falin and Alex seem to work okay together solving mysteries but I am not a fan of them as a couple. I really prefer the chemistry she has with Death.

There is a lot of potential in this series. The world of the Fae is pretty interesting with its intrigues and political mashings but I need more character development all around. By book four, I would hope that Alex would be figuring out her new powers a little more or she would have figured out her relationship needs and wants better. By the end of this book, she really isn’t any further along than she was at the end of book two. She has some pretty nifty powers but doesn't seem anxious to really figure them out.

Maybe cut out some of the internal dialogue (pages of internal dialogue) and move the story along, give Alex a backbone so people stop walking all over her. Have her pick a man and not flip flop on her decision. Bring in more of Death (I like him as a character). He was a bit absent in this book. Let’s have more background on some of the characters and less predictability. I figured out the “who done it” fairly early on, a twist at the end showing someone else was behind the drugs would have been fun. One thing that I liked was the fact that the major plot was wrapped up and some smaller stories are left open. What is the thing I always say, "Win the battle but not the war".

This isn’t a bad series but the first book was my favorite. I can truly see the appeal of this series but this last book was a bit of a disappointment. Book one, I read in two days. I seriously thought I had found my next favorite series. Book Two, took a couple of weeks. Christmas got in the way of reading. Books three and four, took me almost a month and a half. When I am reading the story, it’s ok but if I get interrupted it is really easy to walk away from them and not go back for a day or a week (or three). I need more action and more story progression to keep my interest and less internal dialogue. I really want to pick up a book and read it in a day or maybe two. I want to put it down and have a strong desire to go back to it. Book one was the only one that had this element for me. Book four, I kept reading because I felt I should finish it before reviewing it.

The long and short of it. This whole series is okay. I might give book five a try when it comes out but if some of the issues I have are still there, I probably will not read book six.