The Graveminder

To be quite honest I am on the fence about this one. Melissa Marr came up with some really creative ideas. You've got a town, some undead, a graveminder, an underworld and a contract that involves the whole town. A good basis and possibilities galore....but the execution just wasn't there.

*possible spoilers*

I found that she took too long to get to the heart of the story. It really doesn't pick up until the last four or five chapters where you finally start getting some answers. And even then its like pulling teeth to get information out of the characters. And in the end felt like the answers were pretty vague and didn't hold up.
I also felt that it left a lot unanswered. Why did the dead wake after they died? Why did they need to be minded by the grave minder? How was the gate opened in the first place? All it mentioned was that it was opened and a deal was made. Though I still don't feel that the deal was fully explained either. I could just be missing it or just didn't pick up on it, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't fully explained. There was also something pretty specific towards the end of the book that I thought was thrown in just because she needed a quick device to further the story. Unfortunately this device only brought up more questions and really didn't make any sense at all.
The characters in my opinion were never really fleshed out. The only person in the book that I felt had some quality to her was Amity. So much more could have been done with her character. Rebekkah as the main character seemed kind of flat, and at times annoying when it came to her relationship with Byron, playing like some kind of martyr. Which, admittedly if you read the book you will see why she would be hesitant to the relation ship..but as you learn more, you get to feel more like saying, "Really? Still? Get over it." Rebekkah's aunt Cissy, who ends up a major part of the ending was even less than one dimensional. There was no fleshing out whatsoever. For someone who has such a major part in the story...she sure gets very little play at all in the book.
There were points in the book I seriously wondered if there were editors. It was full of grammatical errors in the first half of the book. Also at one point, there was a character name thrown in that hadn't been mentioned before and was never again mentioned in the rest of the book. The exact passage was "Daniel came over and took charge of keeping the bystanders out of the way." Who is Daniel? If you are going to need a character to take care of the bystanders but he's not really a part of the big picture, they don't really need a name. So continuity was a big issue.
The ending was on the iffy side. Again, good idea and reasonable plot point, but horrible execution.
All in all, it was ok. I know I hit a lot of bad spots and I sound rather miffed at having read the book. However, I know that she is human and it takes a big person to put their "baby" out there for thousands of people to read. So for that I gave it the two stars.