CROAK
GINA DAMICO
SERIES: CROAK #1
GENRES/ SUBJECTS: YA, URBAN FANTASY, PARANORMAL — GRIM REAPERS
★★★☆
GOODREADS LINK
Fed up with her wild behavior, sixteen-year-old Lex’s parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape.
But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than shoveling manure. He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach Lex the family business.
She quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next. But Lex can’t stop her desire for justice — or is it vengeance? — whenever she encounters a murder victim, craving to stop the attackers before they can strike again.
Will she ditch Croak and go rogue with her reaper skills?
The first thing I thought of when I read the summary for Croak was the tv series Dead Like Me (Go watch it! — Not the movie on Netflix though…). I was such a huge fan of that when it aired that I absolutely jumped at the idea of a similar book.
The protagonist Lex is not necessarily nice, at first, she’s a bit violent and snarky but I liked her. To be honest, most of the conflict she came into with the rest of Croak centered around their need to be impartial and her desire for justice/ vengeance. I think most people will see her point of view, if not entirely agree, so her dilemma was quite relatable.
I really liked the idea of Croak as a town, the senior and junior Grims who worked there and how the system of reaping worked. Oddly I sort of felt there was too much worldbuilding and not enough at the same time. We got quite a lot of information but I’m still not completely sure how the system was supposed to work. As I said, I liked Lex and I thought Driggs was alright as a love interest — although to be honest the brother-sister dynamic they had for most of the book was just as interesting, if not more so considering the ending. I’d have liked to see more of Uncle Mort and his basement, especially the three of them hanging out together.
Occasionally, I felt the juniors ‘hanging out’ scenes dragged on a little and, although I felt the ending was a little rushed, it was so action-packed and unexpected I didn’t mind too much. The plot’s interesting and there are some nice twists. I wouldn’t say this is the laugh out loud humor it seems to be billed as, but it did make me smirk a few times. Overall, I’d definitely pick up the next book in the series if I come across it, but I’m not desperate to track it down.
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