From the back cover:
There are secrets buried at Maidenwood—dark secrets that span generations. Medical student Julie Newcomb, who once spent four miserable childhood years at this rundown Virginia plantation, would rather not resurrect ancient memories, or face her own fears.
Yet Julie cannot refuse her relatives’ plea that she spend her summer caring for the bedridden—but still malevolent—family matriarch. Reluctantly, Julie agrees, praying that life at Maidenwood will not be as bleak as before. From the first, though, Julie finds Maidenwood a haunted place, not merely echoing with grim reminders, but filled with dark secrets that will become part of her life even today.
Review:
Med student Julie isn’t thrilled when she’s asked to spend her summer caring for the cruel grandmother with whom she spent four dismal years—years that are strangely blank in her memory. She complies to spare her mother the thankless task, and ends up in the middle of a local mystery. Shortly before her arrival, the skeletons of a woman and infant were found on a road cutting through the family property, known as Maidenwood, and Julie and her family are besieged by reporters, archaeologists, and psychic anthropologists who are interested in the story.
Although I enjoyed reading Be Buried in the Rain, there are several things about the way that it’s written that puzzle me. For example, nothing really happens for about 80% of the book. It registers about a two on the suspense-o-meter. Oh, little things occur that do turn out to be important later, but mostly it’s Julie coping with her hateful grandmother, complaining (rather bitchily) about a co-helper’s cooking, caring for a stray dog, and bantering with and/or eventually rekindling a romance with her ex-boyfriend, an archaeologist who’s been given permission to dig at Maidenwood in an attempt to locate the burial site from which the skeletons were presumably exhumed. Things finally start to move near the end after Julie begins work on reconstructing the face of the adult skeleton based on the skull—apparently someone doesn’t want an identification to be made.
The ending leaves rather a lot to be desired, though. One question is not answered particularly well—how the kooky psychic manages to unearth a genuine archaeological find—and a couple of others not at all, including how the skeletons wound up in the middle of the road. Although the book is grounded in reality throughout, at the very end, Michaels throws in a random dollop of supernatural hijinks, with Julie believing she’s been in communion with the dead woman’s spirit and putting forth the theory that each year, the skeletons pop up again and have to be reburied by the party responsible for their deaths. I’d more easily buy this explanation if there were any notion of supernatural doings anywhere other than the final ten pages or so of the novel.
Still, though I have my complaints I still found Be Buried in the Rain to be reasonably entertaining and expect that I shall read more by Barbara Michaels in future.
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
Ageha grew up in the shadow of her beautiful twin sister, Hana, but lately, with the help of her school counselor, Ichijiku-sensei, she’s been gaining confidence. As volume three begins, Ichijiku and Ageha have begun dating, but it doesn’t last long, as devious Hana dupes Ichijiku into believing she’s Ageha and behaves obnoxiously on a date, causing him to call off the relationship. He eventually figures things out, but getting dumped (even mistakenly) is fuel for Ageha’s insecurities, and more drama ensues. Hana, meanwhile, continues to impersonate her sister, using that guise to test her boyfriend’s fidelity.
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
Black Cat is the story of Train Heartnet, who used to work as an assassin for a powerful organization called Chronos. After an encounter with a female bounty hunter (a.k.a. sweeper) named Saya (whom we only glimpse near the end of volume two), his outlook changed and he gave up that life. Now it’s two years later and Train has become a sweeper himself, collecting bounties on criminals with his partner, Sven. Train’s motto is “more money, more danger… more fun!” and his pursuit of the latter two usually means the duo doesn’t get much of the former. 
Volume six of Monkey High! builds on issues between reserved Haruna and her cheerful boyfriend, Macharu, that began to develop in the previous volume. Macharu, in his optimism, keeps trying to help bring about reconciliation between Haruna and her distant politician father while the mere thought of her family woes is sufficient to ruin any fun Haruna might be having. Macharu’s friend Atsu, who also has feelings for Haruna, tries to take advantage of the situation to convince her that he’s a better choice, but in the end Haruna decides that it’s time to stop running from her family problems and face them head-on.
From the back cover: