Seventh Grave and No Body (Charley Davidson #7) by Darynda Jones...

QTwelve. Twelve of the deadliest beasts ever forged in the fires of hell have escaped onto our plane, and they want nothing more than to rip out the jugular of Charley Davidson and serve her lifeless, mangled body to Satan for dinner. So there’s that. 

But Charley has more on her plate than a mob of testy hellhounds. For one thing, her father has disappeared, and the more she retraces his last steps, the more she learns he was conducting an investigation of his own, one that has Charley questioning everything she’s ever known about him. Add to that an ex-BFF who is haunting her night and day, a rash of suicides that has authorities baffled, and a drop-dead sexy fiancé who has attracted the attentions of a local celebrity, and Charley is not having the best week of her life. But all of that combined barely scratches the surface of her problems. Recent developments—and a few distressing prophesies—have forced her to become a responsible adult. Exactly the kind of adult she’s never aspired to be. To conquer such a monumental task, she’s decided to start small. Really small. She gets a pet. But how can she save the world against the forces of evil when she can’t even keep a goldfish alive?

A tad north of hell, a hop, skip, and a jump past the realm of eternity, is a little place called Earth, and Charley Davidson, grim reaper extraordinaire, is determined to do everything in her power to protect it.

We’re doomed.

I bought my kindle version of this on the day that it was published, but it then took me over a week to gather up the inner strength to actually read it as I find Charley selfish, spiteful & childish, so I quickly end up really irritated with her - plus her constant humour injections are so over-the-top that this series has started to seem like a parody.

As for Reyes: he is manipulative and is suffocatingly controlling, but I have actually been finding him less of an irritant over the past couple of books - probably because he now calls Charley out on her crap, and she is using up most of my ire.

Another ongoing dislike that I've mentioned before is watching the dysfunctional relationship between Charley and Reyes trawl along; Charley just bangs on [and on] about how hot Reyes is, and that is apparently all the justification we need for their relationship - there's not been any significant development to derail my thinking that she is just simply in lust with Reyes. Following their relationship just leaves me wondering who will snap and kill the other one first...

However the bigger problem I had with this book is that there were over a dozen plot threads (no, I'm not exaggerating) that were casually picked up and dropped again as we crazily zigzag between them. I found that I can't fully separate what's important and worth remembering from what is just filler, and I now struggle to remember every character and their relationships with Charley - there's too much pointless waffle to wade through. Plus; most of the subplots plots seem underdeveloped, and failed to make any impact r she was focusing on at the time, so just left it all undone and picked up another subplot to amuse herself with for an hour or two.by

I've read every book in this series and I kind of wished I hadn't, but I couldn't stop because I saw real potential for growth in the beginning, so the promise of what could be kept me coming back to see if there's any improvement, or at least see how it will conclude. However now that I've found out that this particular series has now been extended again (to at least nine books), I'm giving up on it as I'm getting no enjoyment out of reading these books anymore - reading them feels like a chore.

Paperback: £8.99
Kindle; £3.59