I thoroughly enjoyed the unique premise of a graveyard restorer and the gothic feel of this book. The tantalizing ending did war with my need for closure, but what really changed this to qualified recommendation was the addition of the overused serial killer plot.

Amelia saw her first ghost at the age of nine, as she was raking leaves to help her father, a cemetery caretaker. Realizing that she has inherited his ability to see these unnatural beings, he warns her never to acknowledge them or it would result in her being haunted by them forever. You see, ghosts want to belong to the world again. If ghosts realize that she can see them, they soon will feed off of her warmth and energy, feeding off of her like a parasite. Explaining how to survive with this abnormal ability, he also tells Amelia to “keep her distance from those who are haunted; never stray too far from hallowed ground and never tempt fate.”

Now 27, Amelia is a cemetery restorer which helps her to “never stray too far from hallowed ground.” Her career takes her all over the South, where she works to bring back beauty and order to forgotten cemeteries and allows people to appreciate the present by recognizing their past. After a news crew interviews her at one of her restored sites and captures what seems to be a reflection traveling toward heaven, that tape becomes a YouTube sensation. People from all over the world flock to her blog, Digging Graves, making her a minor celebrity to fellow taphophiles. Amelia’s quiet life soon changes, when a body is found in a grave yard that she is restoring. When she is contacted by John Devlin of the Charleston Police Department asking to see photographs that she has taken of the cemetery, she sees the two ghosts that are haunting him, one a beautiful woman of Creole descent and the other a small female child around four years old. Later she finds out that his wife and daughter died in a tragic accident.

Amelia has always obeyed the rules that her father gave her, but with John she finds reasons to forget them. Confessing that she has broken the rules to her father, he warns her that no good can become of this and that she risks opening a door to entities that are “colder, stronger, hungrier than any presence she can imagine.” Still unable to resist John’s thrall, Amelia continues to work with him on a case even though time with him leaves her drained and his daughter’s ghost attempts to contact her.

Piecing together the evidence surrounding the present-day crime, Amelia wonders if this murder is related to one fifteen years ago. Hoping to find clues to the first murder, she is stymied by the lack of information. Back then the local college’s secret organization, Order of the Coffin and the Claw, with alumni comprising the most successful and powerful citizens of Charleston, put a lid on both the investigation and information about the crime. Then a second skeleton is found.

So many things worked well for me. I enjoyed being educated about the imageries and verses used on headstones. The setting was definitely a positive with the romanticism and history of Charleston. The heroine’s career of caring for our ancestors’ resting place evoked a sentimental response. The pacing felt slow at times, but definitely helped create a sense of forbidding and doom.

John and Amelia are both appealing characters. Both have issues that keep them from connecting fully with other people but you feel the pull each has for the other even though there are strong reasons for them not to move past a professional relationship.

While the identity of the villain is fairly easy to discern, that didn’t bother me. The biggest problem I had with the book is related to excess. The heroine can be haunted by ghosts, but then she has to worry about the “Others”; one body is found and then more. The plot device of the heroine being attracted to an individual who is haunted, the reason the ghosts haunt John, and the heroine’s background are very intriguing plot devices, but in the end they were overshadowed by the multiple crimes. Sometimes less is more.

The book does read like the first in a series, but there also is an eBook exclusive called Abandoned which is a prequel to this book. Fans of multiple crimes will find plenty to enjoy in this new series by Ms. Stevens. If one murder is enough for you, then you might want to give it a pass.