The Whispering Dead (Gravekeeper, #1)

by Darcy Coates

I can’t have been out for long. A few seconds at most. I feel like I just finished running a marathon and my prize was getting hit by a train.

More and more stones appeared around her, materializing out of the mist like ships sailing through ethereal waters.

“You’re lucky you came tonight.” Adage pulled a wooden chair up beside her and opened the white box. “I usually only cook stew once a week. If you’d come yesterday, I would have been serving you TV dinners instead.” Keira froze, spoon halfway to her mouth. “I didn’t mean to take your food—” “Don’t be ridiculous.” He pushed his glasses farther up his nose as he squinted at the instructions on the back of a bottle of antiseptic. “My job description includes feeding the poor, but there’s hardly anyone poor enough in this town to feed. You’ll do in a pinch.”

“I can’t say I’m disappointed. Dr. Kelsey is a bit of a… Well, we’re told to love our enemies, in which case I can safely say that I love no one more than Dr. Kelsey.”

I love when priests are sassy

She had no actual memories of her life, but her subconscious kept feeding her tiny clues. Rain is good, it said. It will wash away your footprints. Being found is bad; you don’t want to know what those men are capable of.

A whispered noise echoed from ahead. It sent a spike of fear through Keira. A coppery taste flooded her mouth and made her stomach clench. There’s something evil here. Something evil…something evil…something evil…

Death has tainted this ground, her subconscious whispered. Blood was spilled here.

“Why not do both? Become a TV chef who recites sermons while preparing food. Call it the Cooking Church.” “I could see that working. ‘Add a pinch of salt, just as you are to be the salt of the earth.’ And then I could recommend accompanying communion wines.” “You’re onto something now.”

One of the best parts of the book is the relationship between adage and Kiera. 10/10

if life gives you a chance for something, you can’t hesitate or wait for a better time. You just have to take a leap of faith while it’s there.”

“There are basically two types of learning,” he said at last, and he put his cup aside. “Implicit and declarative. Implicit is for things that become subconscious or muscle memory, such as walking or playing the piano or being able to speak. Declarative is more focused on conscious learning, like remembering the queen’s name or movie plots or your friends’ faces. “When someone suffers from memory loss, they usually lose the declarative but retain most of the implicit—an artist could forget his wife but still be able to paint. I thought this was what had happened to you. You seem generally healthy and mentally sound; you just can’t remember anything. But strangely, you seemed to have retained certain declarative memories as well.” “Ah, like the velociraptors?”