I hate when authors talk about their books after they are done. But I will concede that she is not blogging about it and forcing anyone to hear about her opinions (I'm looking at you, JK Rowling) and I love concrete endings, so I read this anyway.

It was very very short, but it did give a lot of cute stories about the characters (a number of whom I have completely forgotten) and I would recommend it for fans of the books.

Charley has to battle a curse, solve a murder with no body, deal with a video of her on the Internet, and find out how to talk to Rees about everything she's learned. And oh yeah, she has to drink a lot of coffee along the way. This book is full of humor and drama and friendship and moves the story along quickly.

I had the squeal-inducing good fortune to meet Darynda Jones and have her sign a copy of this for me last week at an author visit. The ethereal and charming Jones confessed that she wrote this book because she wanted to give Charley a chance to fall in love with Reyes again. (She is also planning a spinoff for Beep. Cue more squealing.)

With that romantic thought in mind, I approached this book not as an exhausting interlude between the action of book eight and whatever will happen in book ten, but as a chance to re-meet the wonderful characters that Jones has built. She somehow managed to keep all of Charley's warmth and do-good-er-ness along with her snappy humor, while dropping her into a whole new environment and re-introducing all of her friends. Make no mistake, this book is full of pain, terror, and new revelations about the world--but it is also full of love, and light, and kindness. Jones is a marvel.

This is the book that finally answers so many of the questions that have been building up in the previous books, and also has Cookie's wedding and Beep's birth, which are no small things either. With Jones' characteristic snark and sass and ability to make your heat beat uncomfortably fast, this book is no disappointment. The beginning was too slow for me, but I loved how much was revealed--and how much there is yet to see.