Book Review: Post Mortem

Last month I was given the opportunity to read for review, Parish Mail by Kira Snyder. I liked it, so when an opportunity to read for review Post Mortem, the second book in the Parish Mail series came up, I jumped at the opportunity. I received a FREE copy of Post Mortem from Coliloquy in return for my honest review. This in no way effected my final review.

Title: Post Mortem

Author: Kira Snyder

Series: Parish Mail #2

Publisher: Coliloquy

Publication Date: February 7, 2013

Format Read: kindle

Genre: YA Paranormal, YA Crime Mystery

Purchase: Amazon

Find on Goodreads

Description from the publisher:
Celia Macarty is back in Post Mortem, the second installment in the Parish Mail saga.

Autumn in New Orleans means Homecoming, romance—and murder. When a friend vanishes, Celia believes a desperate letter about an unsolved Civil War-era murder holds the key to unraveling the mystery.

As she searches for answers, Celia enlists the help of quirky witch Tilly, and either all-American boy Donovan or, enigmatic Luc–you get to choose.

As the gang follows the missing girl’s trail, danger turns up on all fronts. A vicious stranger threatens Celia’s family. Celia’s nightmares–about a shadowy, ominous villain–get worse. And a new ghost has appeared: beautiful Angelica, who shares a past with Luc.

It will take all of Celia’s will and wit, and the faith of her friends, to solve an unspeakable crime. And no matter which path Celia takes, she will discover that sometimes the past can come back to haunt you.

What’s Cool from Coliloquy: Throughout the Parish Mail series, readers decide which clues to follow to help Celia unravel each mystery. You’ll even get to cast a vote for your favorite love interest. But remember: Choose carefully, or else the killer might just get away.

Post Mortem is another Active Fiction book. I have to say I really liked it. I liked it even better than the first book. One of the reasons for this is all of the character setup is out of the way and I was able to get right down to the story and the mystery to solve.

You continue to follow Celia along with her friends Tilly, Donovan, and Luc. If I bookmarked all of the choices on my Kindle Fire correctly, I was given a choice on four separate occasions on where to take the story. And unlike in the first book, I liked all of the choices I was given. The book starts off pretty much where the last one left off with Celia discovering even more letters in the "mailbox." She is not sure which one to start with, so she just continues on with her normal life until she decides what to do. Through her continued nightmares of the man with the green crown, a break-in, and a friend's disappearance, Celia finds a letter with a similar situation she wants to investigate. However, there are some differences: the girl in the letter dies, but Celia's friend reappears after a few days (even if she is acting strange). Was Celia's intuition off about it being the correct letter?

I found this book to be even more exciting that the first one. At this point, I'm a little sad there isn't a third in the series for me to read. If there was, I would probably be reading it right now. I liked the mystery that they are trying to solve in this book. Although, I did have some things figured out way before Celia did, I still had fun watching her figure it out. She never frustrated me to the point of wanting to hit her over the head to "figure it out already." The story has a nice progression through to the ending. I didn't notice any out of place information, i.e. something that I would have learned from picking a different option than the one I actually picked. I felt the bad guys seemed to have had proper bad guy motivation. Although, I do wonder more about what the really big bad green crown guy's ultimate goal is and how all of the little bad guys fit into the picture. I think what will develop more through future books, which is a good thing. Celia doesn't understand it all yet, so neither should I. 

I feel that I could easily reread this story again in the future. The option to pick different options, really increases the readability. I'm curious, way more so than with the first book, what would happen if I picked the other options while reading the book.

I highly recommend you check out this book. I found it to be a completely enjoyable read and think most young adults (including younger teens and the young adult in all of us), that love a fun paranormal mystery book, would most likely love this book too. And while I think you might have a little trouble with this book if you haven't read the first in the series, I think you could easily pick up this book and figure out who's who and the basics of what is going on. It would be a great book to bring along to the beach this summer as well.

My Rating: 

Book Review: Dead Letter Office

Recently I was given the opportunity to get my hands on Dead Letter Office for FREE in return for my honest review. While I came across the opportunity through the Never Too Old For Y.A. Books Group on Goodreads. However, I received the book from Coliloquy.

One of the reasons I agreed is because this book is an Active Fiction title.

What is Active Fiction?

""Active fiction" is a new type of e-reading experience that allows the reader and the author to interact with each other and the text in new and different ways." - per book description on Goodreads.

Basically you read part of the book, then you come to an either or question (sometimes there are more than two choices). You pick where you want to go. What you pick doesn't impact the overall storyline (you still end up at the same ending).

Title: Dead Letter Office

Author: Kira Snyder

Series: Parish Mail #1

Publisher: Coliloquy
Publication Date: February 11, 2013

Format Read: kindle

Genre: YA Paranormal, YA Crime Mystery

Purchase: Amazon

Find on Goodreads

Description from Goodreads:
When Celia’s father is killed in Afghanistan, she moves with her mother to New Orleans, the city where her father grew up. Struggling to adjust and haunted by troubling dreams, Celia finds comfort in new friends like Tilly, a practicing witch, and Donovan, the son of police detective. On Halloween, bizarre supernatural occurrences rock the city. Celia meets the mysterious Luc and finds a letter, over a hundred years old, addressed to her.

The paranormal repercussions continue when Celia learns that Luc is the restless spirit of a young man murdered in 1854, only able to assume solid form at night. And then, to her shock, Celia finds that the letter, which describes the suspected murder of a man in 1870, contains uncanny parallels to the present-day death of Abel Sims, a homeless veteran.

With help from Luc, Tilly, and Donovan, Celia races to solve the murder—and the mystery of the letter—using both magical and forensic clues.

I found this book to be a nice, fun, quick, and easy read. A few parts were a little creepy, but it wasn't a scary story. Example: Celia is in the cemetery and feels someone put a hand on her shoulder, but when she turns around no one is there. 

The above description from Goodreads explains the basic storyline, so I won't go into that. I will tell you that I liked all of the characters in the book. Celia seemed the most developed. While I felt like I needed to know a little more about Tilly and Donovan. I think some of that is related to the choose where you go. I think it cut down on some of the usual character building. I fully expect to get to know them better as the series goes on. I also liked Luc. As I knew this was a paranormal type of story, I had no problem believing in the ghost aspect of it. The mystery as a whole could have been thought out a little better and I'm still not sure what the connection was between the old murder and the present day one (did I miss that somewhere?). I once again wonder if some of the simplicity/missing/jumps were part of the drawback to the choose where you go. 

I definitely hope there is further information in the next book of the series. I could tell there was clearly more going on with Celia's family (her grandfather, clearly knew more than he was telling). I felt the author did a pretty good job with the struggles between Celia's Mom and Celia's Paternal Grandparents.

This was the first "choose where you go next" type of story that I've read. Overall, I liked my options, but it was still a little limiting. Sometimes I wanted a third option that was a combination of the two or a completely different third option. These choices do give you more options for readability later on. You could easily re-read the story and pick a different option on where to go. Even though it's suppose to get you to the same end, there was one part near the end that I pretty sure was more in reference to an option other than the one I picked. It was related to Tilly.

Overall I was amused and I wouldn't mind reading this type of story in the future and possibly further into this series itself. A Solid 3 Stars, as it definitely has potential.

My Rating: