I’ve said this before, many times: I read books in print.  I have a Kindle Paperwhite, and the iBooks app on all of my various iDevices, but I read every single day and 95% of my reading is on paper.  This wouldn’t be terribly notable except for the part where I’m an independent author, and the vast majority of us make our money pushing ebooks.  In other words, I sell something that I don’t regularly use, and worse, when one of My People writes a book, frequently the sad truth is that I’ll happily purchase and download your book but it’s entirely possible that it’s gonna spend a long time languishing on my Kindle before I have an excuse to get to it.

Not that I’m always super prompt about paper books, mind you, because I have a backlog like every avid reader.  But at least with my print books they’re sitting on my Unread Shelf in my bedroom and they’re glaring at me, and I remember they’re there.  Ebooks are on my Kindle; sometimes I don’t even know where my Kindle is, much less remember a specific book that I ought to get to.

What this means is that when I tell you that once I got started on Unquiet Grave I barely put it down, you probably ought to take it pretty seriously, because “barely put it down” is not something I say about ebooks very often.  Even more amazingly, it’s urban fantasy, hardly my favorite genre– in fact, one I have been complaining about regularly for almost its entire existence.

So.  Right.  The book.  Unquiet Grave is the first of Lampe’s Caitlin Ross series, which is currently at a fairly astonishing six books.  Caitlin is a musician, and in fact drama with her band is one of the main elements of the plot of the book.  She’s also a witch.  However, she doesn’t want to be, and when a supernatural encounter at a gig drags her into the role of protector of her town and Investigator of Strange Doings, she has to make a choice about whether to embrace her nature or continue to suppress it.

Here’s what’s interesting about this book, or at least part of it: it’s the first book in the series, but it feels like it could be book two or three.  The characters have backstory and history that makes the world feel established, and Caitlin herself has been through some shit in her past that I want to know more about.  I don’t know if subsequent books in the series march forward in chronological order or what, but I’d love to see something set before this book at some point.  The Celtic-infused magic system feels like it has rules and boundaries without a lot of time spent explaining them, and Caitlin’s relationships with her husband, bandmates and friends feel real.  The central mystery of the book, which drops back a generation or two into her fictional Colorado town’s history, is a great, interesting story.

The point: you should check this book out.  You’ll like it.  Promise.