Beyond The Grave by Mara Purnhagen
YA Paranormal Romance
E book
August 30, 2011
Harlequin Teen
Being Charlotte Silver, the daughter of famous paranormal investigators, means my life isn’t like that of other teenage girls. Especially after what happened to my parents. Things changed. I missed prom and deferred my big college plans. But I still have my boyfriend, Noah. He’s everything I could want—if I can figure out what’s up with him. Suddenly Noah is secretive.
I fear it has something to do with what happened to us three months ago. The bruise Noah suffered during a paranormal attack has never completely faded. Now I’ve learned Noah is researching demons. And when he disappears, it’s up to me to find him—before something else does. (Goodreads)
Charlotte is slowly trying to come to grips with what happened with her parents. She defeated the watcher (One Hundred Candles) but her mom suffered for it when she was attacked by the watcher and is now in a deep coma. Her father spends all his time with her mom, her older sister has gone back to collage, and Charlotte fears her boyfriend Noah is keeping secrets from her. When an unknown young man begins to spend time with Charlotte’s mom and following Charlotte around, Charlotte learns that the watcher has not been banished but trying to come back to finish what he started.
Beyond The Grave is the last book in the Past Midnight trilogy series. While I thoroughly enjoyed the first two in the trilogy, Past Midnight and One Hundred Candles, I found this one to be lacking in all aspects. Charlotte seems to do a complete 180 in here and ignores all she has learned about the supernatural and spirits. We don’t see the same strong, intelligent girl in here. Noah is acting strange, showing signs of possession, and Charlotte turns a blind eye to it. Almost as if she feels if she ignores it, it will go away. Tricia and Shane have a huge part in the storyline with planning their wedding which we receive detailed scene stealing information on. It completely overshadows the main conflict and plot. We see and hear more about them then we do Charlotte’s mom and Noah-two main characters and integral parts of the arc. The main characters of this series take a back seat to the sub characters and it leaves us with a underdeveloped poorly planned storyline. Bliss’s added storyline comes out of left field and did nothing but add more filler then substance. There wasn’t enough story to support the additional cast and all the available opportunities I saw for Ms. Purnhagen to take it a higher level were ignored.
The storyline is sporadic with random subplots added and characters that are suppose to build the suspense and set up the finale but come across uninspiring and boring. Slow arc and character advancement drags the story down so badly that it’s not until the last 30 or so pages that you get any idea of where Ms. Purnhagen wants to go with all this and we get a fast somewhat gory closure that is completely at odds with the rest of the story. Our villain is literally pulled out of thin air and we are not given much background to support any of it. The book read like a story that had to be written rather then one that wanted to be written. All in all a disappointing ending to an otherwise fabulous trilogy.
Overall Rating: D
*I received this ARC ebook from Netgalley in return for an honest review. No compensation was expected or received.
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