Sandi's Reviews > Memento Mori

Overall, this is a great PNR, based on the backdrop of behind the scenes of a New Orleans ghost hunting reality show, with the additional driver of a serial killer plotline. For someone like me, whose guilty pleasure is ghost hunter shows, having that as a premise for a PNR is a ton of fun, and I absolutely loved it!

Hanlen is back in New Orleans after ten years away (after the murder of her best friend) to open up her family’s plantation estate to a reality television ghost hunting team, lead up by Dev. Hanlen, however, is a skeptic, and really has no interest in any of it, and just wants to get it over with. That is, until she meets the enigmatic Dev. Dev is not rattled at all by Hanlen’s skepticism, actually, he even welcomes it, but that’s really because he knows the truth of the world because he actually sees, speaks with, and interacts with actual ghosts on a daily basis. And that’s literal. There are characters in this book that are ghosts, and while they’re not primary, they are definitely integral to driving the story. And Dev and Hanlen’s chemistry is pretty instant on both sides, yet it feels natural and right. There’s not a lot of pretense between them, the core conflicts really don’t surround their relationship - they’re attracted to each other, and they definitely don’t waste a lot of time making that clear.

As Dev’s team prepares for their shoot at Hanlen’s estate, we get the behind the scenes of this reality show. The team of the show, an eclectic group of believers, practitioners, technicians, and skeptics, work to pull everything together, do research, be ready for filming. It’s actually a fascinating conglomerate of people - Dev is a Vodou Houdon, with his own magic and spirit connections that drive the show, a witch, an excommunicated priest, technical experts, and a psychologist skeptic. They are an interesting group as well, and the characters definitely add to the overall feel of making this more realistic. But while all this is happening, a serial killer lurks in the wings. The even more fascinating part, is that we actually get peeks into this person’s mind - each time there is a murder, we get a chapter from their POV, and it totally adds to the creepy and ominous feel of the book.

Avoiding any spoilers, I really loved the way all the different aspects of the story melded together so well. The personal side - the backstories for Dev and Hanlen and their personal connections to the supernatural world (even when unaware), the machinations of the ghost hunting show behind the scenes, and how the serial killer activity ties into all of it, it really worked. Overall, everything comes together in a way that just made this an absolutely enjoyable book in every way.