World Tree Girl by Kerry Schafer

The second book in one of my favorite new series hit shelves earlier this month, yahoo!

Maureen Keslyn is no stranger to the weird and supernatural. She spent her career working for the FBI's top secret Unit, investigating just those things. But she's retired now, thanks to a disagreement that left the Unit ready to kill her to keep her secrets. The death of her old partner Phil left her in charge of Shadow Valley Manor, a retirement home with more than it's fair share of secrets, keeping her plenty busy. 

When a local man is found dead, with pictures of an unidentified girl Maureen and the local sheriff have taken to calling the World Tree Girl, they begin to fear that one of Shadow Valley Manor's worst may have gotten loose. The girl's body has gone missing, but not before a blogger revealed that all the blood in her body had turned into clear goo. The dead man, who coincidentally was just fired from the coroner's office that lost said body, appears to have been that blogger. And his own death appears to be somewhat suspicious as well. Could the Unit have gotten to him?

I love Maureen. I mentioned that in my review of the first entry in the series, Dead Before Dying. And this second picks up pretty much where that last one left off. So you do have to read them in order.

In addition to the dead body that Maureen and Jake are trying to track down, you know, to assure themselves that the whole blood turning to goo thing doesn't mean what they think it means (read Dead Before Dying), Shadow Valley Manor is having some issues as well. It seems the local spirits aren't crossing over the way they need to and they're ALL flocking to Shadow Valley Manor.

And then Phil's daughter arrives, claiming she's going to contest the will that left Maureen in charge of Shadow Valley Manor!

There are a lot of threads in World Tree Girl and I didn't feel that all of them came together quite as cleanly as they could have. A middle schooler catches wind of the happenings at Shadow Valley Manor, for example, and it kind of looked like she'd play more of a role in the story than she actually did and there are hints at something odd with Matt, the cook and undercover Unit agent (now double agent working with Maureen), just to name a couple.

But I enjoyed returning to Shadow Valley Manor and spending more time with Maureen. She really is my new favorite genre heroine! Plus, I've been in a massive reading slump and I'm really hoping that Maureen and her team might have pulled me out of it. I just hope some of those dangling threads are going to extend into the next entry where we'll get more explanation/resolution.