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I’ve had The Restorer by Amanda Stevens on my TBR Pile for roughly forever. According to Amazon I bought the Kindle version in 2016 so not quite 4 years. I finally picked it up because it was a recommended read by a COYER participant. As an added bonus it fit the regular rules of COYER as well!

I really enjoyed The Restorer. Basically if there’s a ghost story involved it’s going to have to go out of its way to make me dislike it. In this book the ghosts don’t play a super active role. They are there and they do impact the story but they aren’t interactive much with Amelia. It’s kind of difficult to explain because obviously the ghosts do interact with Amelia but Amelia is doing her most to pretend like they aren’t even there.

Amelia’s father’s rules are clear; she isn’t supposed to even acknowledge the ghosts because they’ll latch on in an attempt to steal her own life force. This is the first time when I’ve seen ghosts play an actually malevolent role in a story. It was very interesting. I have a lot of questions and I think they’ll be addressed in the subsequent books. How did her father come across these rules? Did he learn them from someone else? Towards the end of the book Amelia is breaking rules left, right, and center. I’m sure that’s where we’re heading.

Romance is not the main focus of The Restorer. There is a bit of a slow burn romance but the story doesn’t abide by the typical romance “rules”. I’m really very curious to see what happens in the next book for a lot of different reasons. The storyline and the character development left me wanting more but not because of disappointment. I feel like the story flowed very well.

I’m really glad I picked this up and I’ll be adding the second book to my TBR Pile for February!