Review | Spectre (Zoe Martinique, Book 2) by Phaedra Weldon @PhaedraWeldon

Title: Spectre
(Zoe Martinique, Book 2)
Author: Phaedra Weldon

Length: 372 Pages

Released: June 2008

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Blurb

Zoë Martinique has the extraordinary ability to travel outside her body at will. When she is drawn into an investigation of a series of bizarre murders, in which the victims are missing body parts, Zoë hopes to help her boyfriend, Atlanta homicide detective Daniel Frasier, stop the killer? one she?s sure is from the darkest levels of the astral plane?without letting him find out about her special abilities.

Then danger strikes close to home when Zoë?s mother disappears, and Zoë must use all the powers at her command to save her?even though Zoë knows that, in doing so, she may make herself into something no longer entirely human.

Although this is not the best book I've ever read, it was a solid 4.4. I'd say 4.5, but then I'd have to round up and it wasn't that good. I personally enjoyed Zoe's inner dialog, it made her more real to me, but I can also see how some people could find that highly annoying.

I've never read the first book, though I probably will some day. This book is obviously the second of what the author intends to be a longer series. (best guess would be 4 or 5, whatever the market will bear I guess.) In this book, Zoe's still getting used to her newfound powers as a Wraith and discovering new aspects to that power.

The plot was rather basic, by that I mean I felt like I'd heard it all before, and the other characters were just so-so. Still, Zoe's inner voice was just plain funny. For those of us sensitive to profanity, um there is a lot of it in here. Granted, some of it is very well placed and very funny. For some reason, I couldn't tune my reading ear to hear a Southern accent throughout most of the book, which I found strange given the setting.

One thing that bothered me was the lack of a feeling of closure at the end of the book. Saying much more than that would give away some pretty big plot twists, but it's like the feeling at the end of the Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, maybe things are ok for now, but there's so much left undone. I really dislike those blatant sort of buy-the-next-book ploys. Oh and another thing, it's not really an "investigation" I mean the woman does more work just trying to figure herself out than murder mystery type thing. Things just seem to fall into place around her.

Lovely book overall, looking forward to more, sort of wish it were for a younger crowd though, so I could recommend it to kids. I think it's one of the best examples of voice I've seen in a long time.