The Chick and the Dead by Casey Daniels

Pepper Martin, Book 2

Synopsis: Ever since the former rich girl-turned-Cleveland cemetery tour guide banged her head on a headstone, she sees dead people. Worse still, she hears them—and they won’t shut up! Now it’s Didi Bowman, a poodle-skirted relic from the Great Beyond, who’s bending Pepper’s ear, complaining that her famous author sister, Merilee, has done her wrong. Trouble is, if Pepper proves it, she’ll break the hearts of millions of Merilee’s fans. And if she doesn’t, Didi’s ghost may never go away.

Pepper needs peace and quiet (and rent money), so the cash-strapped ex-heiress agrees to take a job as Merilee’s secretary and dig around the family tree. But when she unearths more than she bargained for—like an illegitimate daughter, a bunch of illicit love affairs, and a possible murder—suddenly a very poisoned pen is all set to write Pepper out of the story permanently.

Review: I liked the first volume and I was curious to discover this new story, I must say that I wanted to see Quinn again and especially I was eager to discover this investigation!

Now that Gus has disappeared, it’s Didi’s turn, the sister of a well-known author, to appear on the front of the stage. The problem is that she lies as she breathes and she asks Pepper to prove that it is not her sister who wrote the world-famous novel that everyone is talking about, but her. Before making a scandal, how do you know if it’s the truth? But Pepper is determined and she will do everything to find out what happened so long ago and she will reveal secrets that many people would have preferred to remain buried. Yet this research may well once again put her life in danger.

I really enjoyed this novel, even perhaps more than the first as the basics of the story are now well laid. Pepper will have to separate the true from the fake, which is not that simple and I found it very interesting! For my biggest pleasure, we’ll see Dan and Quinn again (yes, Quinn !!!) and I can not wait to see what she’s going to do for both of them, especially since we’ll have a big revelation for the first one!

So it was a very nice sequel to read and I’m curious to embark on the third one!