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Since her beginning at Harlequin Books, Amanda Stevens has always been one of my favorite authors. Her stories flow with a cadence that I’ve seldom encountered in fiction—and she also knows how to tell a great ghost story without resorting to parlor tricks to make it chilling. The Prophet, the third book in her Graveyard Queen series, brings on major chills.
After returning from a cemetery restoration job in Asher Falls, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Amelia Gray fights to regain her health, but the ghosts who follow her around drain what little energy she has left. She’s done what her father said she must never do: acknowledge the dead. As a result of her disregard for her father’s rules, the number of disenchanted spirits who find their way to her increases daily.
Back in Charleston, her feelings for a police detective named Devlin slam into her full-force again, but she must stay away from him in order to survive. He’s haunted by the ghosts of his wife and daughter, who have no intention of leaving him in peace—his wife, Mariama, especially.
As she steers clear of Mariama’s wrath, Amelia goes against her father’s wishes and helps a ghost figure out who killed him, which leads to a street drug that causes powerful hallucinations and a voodoo practitioner who delves into deep, dark, black magic.
I can relate to Amelia on so many levels, from her need for solitude to her longing for someone she can’t have. Her willingness to go where her father hadn’t dared only makes her a stronger and wholly likeable character. She wants to help lost souls even if it means that she’ll suffer for it in the end.
Ms. Stevens paints a frightening picture of the ghosts that surround Amelia to the point that you’ll be watching the story play out like a movie in your head, making you shiver from your scalp down to your toes. Few characters unnerve me the way Mariama does—a selfish ghost with a mean streak and unknown powers that could harm a living soul.
From the opening sentence to the last, The Prophet snared my attention and kept me from going crazy on a slow day at work. Everyone should keep something this deliciously creepy and romantic tucked inside their lunch box for those days that just creep along.
