Recent Reads: Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison

Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison
Series: Madison Avery Trilogy #1
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date:  May 2009

 

Format: Hardback
Source: Bought, Home Library/ June TBR Jar pick #2
Image Source: Goodreads

Rating:

 




Goodreads Synopsis: 

My name is Madison Avery, and I'm here to tell you that there's more out there than you can see, hear, or touch. Because I'm there. Seeing it. Touching it. Living it.

Madison's prom was killer—literally. For some reason she's been targeted by a dark reaper—yeah, that kind of reaper—intent on getting rid of her, body and soul. But before the reaper could finish the job, Madison was able to snag his strange, glowing amulet and get away.

Now she's stuck on Earth—dead but not gone. Somehow the amulet gives her the illusion of a body, allowing her to toe the line between life and death. She still doesn't know why the dark reaper is after her, but she's not about to just sit around and let fate take its course.

With a little ingenuity, some light-bending, and the help of a light reaper (one of the good guys! Maybe . . . ), her cute crush, and oh yeah, her guardian angel, Madison's ready to take control of her own destiny once and for all, before it takes control of her.

Well, if she believed in that stuff.

 Review: 

Once Dead, Twice Shy has been on my shelf at home for a while now. I loved the premise and the cover so I picked it up out of the bargain bin at some point. This month it was one of the books chosen from my TBR jar so I was excited to start reading it – what I found was that while the book was good it seemed like there was a lot of the story missing.

We start out the book with Madison and she is already dead, we get that information from the half page of Prologue… but then the story jumps right in assuming that we know how she died, who Barnabus is, how she is still alive but dead-ish… It was all very weird. As this is the first book in the Madison Avery series I figured that the author was doing some strange lead up to a flashback or something, but no…it just kept truckin’.

What I liked about the book was the fast pace of it all, even though a good amount was me trying to figure out what was going on. And the main character Madison was enjoyable as well. She was funny and seemed like a relatable person, which was nice. It was very hard to get past the feeling that this was book 2 in the series though – So if you know what I missed, please let me know  (thanks!).