Shallow Graves

By: Kali Wallace

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

For fans of Holly Black and Nova Ren Suma, a gripping, hauntingly atmospheric novel about murder, revenge, and a world where monsters - human and otherwise - lurk at the fringes.

When 17-year-old Breezy Lin wakes up in a shallow grave one year after her death, she doesn't remember who killed her or why. All she knows is that she's somehow conscious - and not only that, she's able to sense who around her is hiding a murderous past.

In life, Breezy was always drawn to the elegance of the universe and the mystery of the stars. Now she must set out to find answers and discover what is to become of her in the gritty, dangerous world to which she now belongs - where killers hide in plain sight and a sinister cult is hunting for strange creatures like her. What she finds is at once empowering, redemptive, and dangerous.

Tense, complex, and wholly engaging, Shallow Graves is a stunning first novel from Kali Wallace.

©2016 Kali Wallace (P)2016 Harper Audio

Awesome....

The depth of the characters was terrific and the use of plot twists cunning! I want more.

Dark , Twisted, and Funny

You’ll have to forgive my grammar in this review I’m in my car I just finished” had to write a review on it. This story is absolutely fantastic dark the concept of death and magic is one-of-a-kind. I found it very contemporary very funny very up-to-date and I highly recommend it for my eighth graders and older. Hardly any language and sexual content but definitely definitely action, mystery excitement and most of all very bone chilling at some points.

A Day in the Life of a Not-Quite Zombie

Breezy Lin came back from the dead a year after she died. Her body still works. Though she has to really concentrate to keep her lungs breathing and her heart beating. She's not decomposing nor does she have any appetite for human brains or humans in general. But it is a fact that she had been dead for a year. And she came back as more than a reanimated corpse. Because she can sense who the murderers are and has the ability to put them permanently out of commission.

From the summary, I sort of expected some sort of mystery/thriller. I expected the book to be about Breezy trying to figure out who killed her and/or who brought her back and why (to both questions). But this is not what I got.

This is not to say that I am disappointed. In fact, I did enjoy it.

Having said that, I don't think this is everyone's cup of tea. There's no big romance or big epic action here. Breezy did not come back to life to be some savior.

The story is really more like a slice of life type of story. It's really more like what would happen if an ordinary teenager came back to life and decided to leave her town without anyone the wiser trying to find a way to get back to normal. And meets very dangerous "people" along the way.

It's really a big question whether she will be able to get back to her old life. Or whether she will be able to know who brought her back to "life."

But again, this book is more slice of life. The big draw of this book is Breezy's journey into the world (away from her family who doesn't even know if she's dead or alive and everyone else who knew her in life) and the people she meets along the way. Some ok. Some wanting to do her serious harm.

I really find it interesting because her journey gives her more insight to the book's supernatural world and how magic works in her world. I find it interesting because Breezy manages to get out of the trouble she unwittingly gets into even if she's all alone.

If you're tired of dystopias and all the good vs evil stuff and introduction of saviors/messiah figures in YA, you might want to give this book a try. There's a lot of mystery posed in this book. And I won't be able to say that all the mystery will be solved. However, it is clear that Breezy is that type to get to the answer or at least try to

Must read for folks who've died & come back wrong!

Many stories feature people brought back from the dead by the magic of a loved one's wish—perhaps a parent, a child, a lover, a sibling—the monkey's paw curls and now there's knocking at your door and on the other side is your loved one, who has come back, not as you knew them, but terribly wrong.

These sorts of stories, with their fantastic Aesop that you should never wish for the dead to come back to life, are much like time travel stories, where the moral is invariably not to alter your past with a time machine. The dead character who has returned—but is no longer the loved one you knew and cared for—serves as a lesson to live a life without regrets, to let go and move on in the face of death and hardship.

But what about us, the returned dead, we who came back as monsters? Are we to accept being mere metaphors for the importance of moving on? Don't we deserve to be loved as we are now, even though we may forget to pretend to breathe, even though that dinner you have prepared for us tastes like ash in our mouth, even though the hunger coiling inside of us can only be sated with a human life? Don't we deserve love and family too?

Our knocking at the door has stopped. We heard your final wish on that monkey's paw. We're not the loved one you wanted. The good daughter with a heartbeat. So we'll go somewhere else. Find others who'll accept us. We'll move on too.

Not worth it

The story was very anti climatic. It had so many opportunities to thickened and it just fizzled out. Written for a young adult. Definitely could have been better imo.

not really what I expected

went into this story expecting one thing and got something so different and I was really let down by the ending