My Rating
I have always loved Darcy Coates horror stories coz it satisfies my need for a haunted place or a house with a heroine who is at first clueless but then grows into the one who vanquishes the evil forces. The Whispering Dead, book #1 in the Gravekeeper series adds to the thrill of having a heroine who is psychic but has absolutely no memory of her own.
Except for her name, Keira has no recollection of her previous life, waking up injured in a forest amidst a thunderstorm and seeking refuge in a parsonage. Men are hunting for her but Pastor Adage offers her the old gravekeeper’s cottage as shelter. The setting of the story is fantastic, Dacy uses the elements of thunder and fog to create the most foreboding cemetery, the graves decayed and decrepit, stretching back into the woods. It is then that Keira realizes her ability to see spirits and when one of them begins to make her presence known, Keira begins her search for the truth. The town of Blighty was easily imaginable with its quirky residents. Zoe with her over-the-top personality was hilarious and I hope that as the series progresses, romance would develop between Mason and Keira.
Many plot points are introduced in the story, majorly Keira’s past and the photograph she is carrying in her hands, there is also a hint of trauma in Mason’s life which is yet to be explored but the central plot of the ghost called Emma and her unrequited love has been provided a solution. The beginning was decidedly spookier but the creepy edge is lost towards the climax as the kinda charming effect of the town comes into play.
Darcy Coates has set the tone of the series brilliantly and I can’t wait to read all the books in the series ASAP. Fans of ghost stories with plain haunting as its theme and not much gore would surely love this.
If you are like me who loves such ghost stories, then The Whispering Dead by Darcy Coates will be a perfect choice.
Homeless, hunted, and desperate to escape a bitter storm, Keira takes refuge in an abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage. Her new home is tucked away at the edge of a cemetery, surrounded on all sides by gravestones: some recent, some hundreds of years old, all suffering from neglect.
And in the darkness, she can hear the unquiet dead whispering.
The cemetery is alive with faint, spectral shapes, led by a woman who died before her time… and Keira, the only person who can see her, has become her new target. Determined to help put the ghost to rest, Keira digs into the spirit’s past life with the help of unlikely new friends, and discovers a history of deception, ill-fated love, and murder.
But the past is not as simple as it seems, and Keira’s time is running out. Tangled in a dangerous web, she has to find a way to free the spirit… even if it means offering her own life in return.
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Sounds like a really creepy winner!
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I loved it for the simple ghost story:-)
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