Melissa Marr: "Graveminder" (spoilers!)

Ok I just finished this book yesterday, so I thought I could start off my review blog with this one!

This is a book about a small town called Claysville that has made a pact with Death. As long as the people in the town keep the dead in the ground, Death will keep them safe and healthy.,there are, of course, a few catches. There has to be a "Graveminder", who (as the name suggests) minds the graves.  They have a bond with the dead and want to be a part of the world of the dead. They also tend the graves to make sure the dead don't rise. It is always a woman and it is always passed down through the same (in this case the Barrows) family. The woman, sadly does not really have a choice: they either die or they become the next Graveminder.  No one born in the city can ever leave, either. They are destined to live and die in that one place. I liked this concept for the story; the fact that a town can make a deal with death was very intriguing to me. One usually thinks of deals with the devil, not deals with Death.

The main character of the story, Rebekkah, is basically an outsider; her and her mom moved to the city when Rebekkah was in high school. Her mom fell in love and married Jimmy Barrow. Jimmy's mom, Maylene, and Rebekkah became really close, Rebekkah deciding to adopt the last name Barrow. Maylene did have a biological daughter, Cissy, and two grand daughters but did not trust them with the task of grave minding. Maylene treated Rebekkah as one of her own and taught her everything she needed to know about grave minding. Cissy was not happy about this and hated Rebekkah from the very beginning. Towards the end I was getting confused, however, why Cissy was so upset that she couldn't become the Graveminder. Everyone that talked about it, talked about how what a burden it was, and how they should have a choice in the matter. And yet Cissy wanted it no matter what. Why was she so different then everyone else? I can understand it was supposed to be passed down to blood relatives, but the current Graveminder can also choose. I would think that Cissy would be happy not to have the burden and to let her daughters live normal lives. Granted they do make her out to be a bit crazy in the end, but it still doesn't really explain why she was so upset that she (or one of her daughters) didn't get the "burden" of being the Graveminder.

The other part of the story has to do with a person known as "the undertaker". The undertaker is in
charge of keeping the Graveminder safe and bringing her between the two worlds of the living and the dead. The undertaker in this story is Byron Montgomery. Byron has been in love with Rebekkah since she first moved to town. Rebekkah, on the other hand, has never liked to be tied down or "trapped", as she puts it. Byron and Rebekkah met when Byron started dating Rebekkah's sister, Ella. Ella was supposed to be the next Graveminder after Maylene, but Ella fell too hard for the dead world and decided to die to be a part of it as opposed to living. When Ella died, the task fell to Rebekkah, Maylene trusting her over her own daughters. Byron and Rebekkah are in a sordid relationship for the next few years, Rebekkah finally asking to be cut off completely. Byron agrees but pines for her for the 8 years she is away from Claysville. Once she comes back he immediately tries to win her over again. Byron sort of annoyed me in this book. He was like a whipped puppy and nothing ever changed that, no matter how crappy Rebekkah treated him. It just made me mad that he was so devoted to her even though she constantly pushed him away. At some point we do learn that the current Graveminder and undertaker are drawn to each other, but it still made me mad now hard Byron tried. After a while I just wanted him to stop caring so much because Rebekkah was kind of being a bitch to him. In the end she does admit that she has loved him all along and that she just
couldn't admit it until then, but that made me a little more upset because she seemed to be playing games with him the whole book. She would entice him with kisses then sex, then say "nah.. Just kidding..". So it was just really frustrating. And Rebekkah didn't really seem to grow as a person/character. Yeah she admitted she loved him, but she still seemed like the kind of person who would tease him then run away. I feel Byron was being very stupid and she was just playing with him.

After being gone for 8 years, Rebekkah comes back to Claysville because she has learned of Maylene's death. Byron tells her it was murder and they team up to try and find out what had happened to her. They soon learn their jobs, having been kept in the dark until now, and what it means to the town. They also discover that the reason Maylene was dead was because someone had not tended a grave properly. When they graves are not tended properly, the dead rise and are drawn to the graveminder. The graveminder then has to take them back to the world of the dead. The dead, however, are hungry and Daisha just wanted to feed, which she did whole heartedly. Maylene had been killed by the walking dead. Byron and Rebekkah discover this walking dead girl, known as Daisha, has been going around town biting and killing people, trying to quench her hunger. It is now their job to find this walking dead and stop her before she does more damage to the town. My favorite character was Daisha and I wish there was more of her. She was a good character with good development, even if she was a flesh eating monster. I really liked now she would remember more of her living world the more human flesh she ate. It was an interesting concept and at first I thought it was going to make her turn back to human. Instead, Daisha extracted revenge on those that caused her death.

The big twist at the end of the story is when the reader finds out that Cissy is behind all the deaths. We find out that Cissy is the one who messed up the graves and who made sure they weren't mended so that the dead would rise hungry. She was trying to get rid of Rebekkah so that she could take over the graveminding business. I was actually surprised by this ending. The author does show that Cissy hates Rebekkah and that she is crazy, but not that she is capable of murder. The author also doesn't spend a lot of time on their relationship, so I somewhat forgot about Cissy as I got to the end of the book, which was most likely the point.

The book ends with Rebekkah and Byron finding a nest of recently dead people that Cissy has brought back to kill Rebekkah. Rebekkah turns the tables on Cissy, though, because the dead are attached to her and not Cissy. Rebekkah sicks the walking dead on Cissy then takes them all back to the land of the dead. Both Byron and Rebekkah embrace their new roles in life and vow to keep the town safe and the dead from rising.

All in all I really enjoyed this book. It was a different type of story then one I've read before and I really like that the ending was a bit of a shock to me. I thought that the end that Cissy got was fitting for all the people she was at fault for killing. I didn't like Bryon and Rebekkah's relationship and it some parts it just felt forced. I also wanted to shake Byron and tell him to wake up! One other thing I didn't like was how Rebekkah wasn't sure about anything or really anyone and didn't want to commit to anything or anyone for almost the whole book, then just accepts everything and professes her love to Byron. I felt it was a huge change and it just happened in like a day, which was unrealistic to me.
But again, a book I enjoyed and one I think I will read again in the future.

4 out of 5 stars.  :)

Next book I am going to review: "the one I left behind" by Jennifer Macmahon

Have a good night!