Haunted by Kelley Armstrong

The Women of the Otherworld series covers a lot of ground in just a few books and bringing Eve into the picture shows just how much it covers.  Eve is the self appointed black sheep of the witch race, and she never learned to look before she leaps.  Her impetuousness, cliche though it may be, is her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.  She's a great spellcaster, a half-demon, a former track star and a decent martial artist, but if she didn't make snap decisions without all the facts, she wouldn't be where she is at the start of the book, or at any other point in it, to be truthful.

Haunted takes place mostly in the afterlife and deals as much with the pain of being able to see those left behind as it does with catching the bad guy.  Pretty much everyone who has ever lost someone has wondered if their loved one was there watching them, hoping they were and afraid to hope at the same time.  Now we get to see the other side of the coin.  Possibly the best thing to take away from this book is not to let regret hold you in one place too long.  As much as Eve takes action without thinking things through, she's also stuck in one spot, trying to make up for leaving her daughter behind.  But if you can't talk to someone, can't touch them, and they don't even know you're there, you can't actually help them or save them or even be real for them and that is just completely futile.

 It takes a while for that futility to come home to Eve, and if it didn't eventually, I wouldn't have made it through the whole book.  I'm not going to go into more detail than that, because too much in the way of spoilers is no fun for anyone.


All in all, this is another great entry in the series and I'm still loving being a part of this great challenge.  Next up, Broken!