Elizabeth Norris - Unraveling (2012)

This book started out poorly - Janelle Tenner gets hit by a truck, dies and is brought back to life by a boy in the same grade at her high school, Ben Michaels. As she is magically healed she shares his memories of her and realises he has loved her since he was 10 years old - sound familiar? It's book 1 of the Roswell series.

Then everything got interesting - radiation deaths, an explosive device counting down, earthquakes, multiverse and a murdered FBI father. It started to become a really good book and I'd actually forgiven Norris for the beginning. Until I got to the ending. That was just AWFUL.

Talk about deus ex machina.

Mysterious men from a parallel universe pop in and shoot the bad guy just in time, the same teenage bad guy who'd murdered Janelle's father and best friend. His other two friends, one of whom is Ben, are just allowed to go home to their parallel universe AFTER killing hundreds of people in Janelle's universe. Everyone just left Janelle in a remote location with the body of her best friend even though she couldn't phone for help because the city was destroyed by an earthquake and everyone was struggling to survive. Worse - Janelle just happily sits there and thinks how wonderful life is and how much she wants to live it with Ben. Hopefully the FBI found her and locked her up as an accessory to getting hundreds of people dead because she withheld so much information from them because of her "love" for Ben.

As endings go that one really sucked. What an utterly disappointing book.

Lisa Shearin - The Dragon Conspiracy (2015)

This is the second book in the SPI Files series.

They're the Supernatural Protection and Investigations Agency. They try to stop what roams in the night from eating you. In this book they have to find a cluster of diamond eggs, stolen by Harpies, that can cause complete chaos in the supernatural community. Mostly by unmasking supernaturals, removing their glamour and exposing them to the world. In a city as big as New York with a large supernatural community, that's a lot of rioting, burning torches and pitchforks once the humans learn what lives alongside them.

Once more it's down to the human seer Makenna and her human partner Ian to solve the mystery and save New York - with the help of the SPI team. I really love these books. There's nothing Shearin has written that I haven't loved. Shearin is a fantastic writer, her characters are so evolved you feel sad even when a walk-through character dies. This book was a fun ride, I was sad when it was over. I like the way the characters and the stories are developing. I cannot wait for book three - although I hope it has better cover art.

Meg Cabot - Love you to Death (Mediator 1) (2000)

Susannah Simon is a mediator - she resolves issues for the dead and sends them on their way, sometimes a little forcefully with a bit of chicken's blood, some vanilla scented candles and a small exorcism.  No big!

All this was fine in New York, who'll notice the crazy amongst rushing millions? But, Suze's mother re-married and moved to California, the land of sun, surf and homicidal ghosts. Not to mention her lush new bedroom is already occupied - by a dead-cute boy.

Between a new high school, family and the undead Suze might just be in over her head.

This was an AWESOME book! I love Cabot's take on 'I see dead people'.  It's nice to see (mostly) ordinary ghosts who are just like when they were alive and generally need one thing resolved so they can move on. It's teenage fiction, so I didn't expect horror anyways, but Cabot brings a cheerfulness to the story that really draws you in and makes you happy.

Anne Bishop - Written in Blood (2013)

This is the first in a new series by the ever brilliant author, Anne Bishop.

Meg Corbyn is a cassandra sangue, a woman who can see the future when her skin is cut. This makes her a very valuable commodity without a life of her own. Escaping her 'owners' she ends up in the non-human section of the country, hiding where human law does not apply.

The non-humans in this book are the best I have ever read - they're not the fluffy werewolves and sparkly vampires of popular fiction. They're what they truly are, a completely different species with opposing beliefs and societal mores to humans. They see humans the same way a lion would, as prey. They tolerate them... when they're not hungry.

Every myth or monster is alive and living in the Others courtyards and they do not politely negotiate when they feel threatened. They're the dominant species on the planet, humans are just tasty-tasty-monkeys to them, and when the humans try to assert their dominance cities drown, Winter strikes and scary things get scarier.

I cannot wait for books two and three, this book was just that fantastic. If you really enjoy urban fantasy then 'Written in Blood' shouldn't be missed.

Diana Rowland - Sins of the Demon

This is Rowland's third book in the Kara Gillian series. It's fun, plain and simple.

Kara is a cop, a demon summoner and a mystery. Just when I think I've grasped the character, and the plot, Rowland shakes everything up, just like a snow globe, and I'm suddenly looking at the story from a whole new angle. The writing is excellent, detailed, consistent and with just enough description that my own imagination can click in. It's good to find an author who doesn't think her reader's are idiots, that's become too rare with all the electronic publishing. People are writing garbage and it's getting published, warts and all, in the race to have more and more books out there.

Poor Kara is dealing with deaths that have an odd link to her past in this one. Being a homicide detective you think she'd know how to hide the bodies better... of course it's not her, you can't have an evil heroine! So once again Kara calls on demons to find out the truth about her past and the past of her friends and the why of what is happening. No-one is who they seem in this series, I know, that sounds like the worst cliche and should probably be followed by the words 'this is the not to be missed episode', but for once it's true. Rowland is just that good at twisting the story until you get to the conclusion & your brain goes 'OMGWTFBBQ!'.