Tracy’s review of Dead on Delivery (Messenger #2) by Eileen Rendahl
There are two men who have bitten the dust after a delivery from Messenger Melina Markowitz. As she tries to put together the pieces of this puzzle, she discovers that the two victims share common friends, common unexplained absences, and a common crime. Now, dark forces from the local community have been unleashed, drawing Melina into the web of a powerful woman, her voodoo, and her vengeance…
Telling Melina not to look into something that she’s curious about is like telling her to just go ahead and do it because she’s gonna do it anyway. She just can’t let things go once she starts thinking about them. She doesn’t ever look into the packages that she delivers – she just does her job as the messenger and then moves on. But when she hears that 2 of the men that she’s recently delivered packages have died – supposedly by suicide – she’s damned curious to find out what happened to them.
She decides to look into the deaths and discovers some strange magic that’s akin to Santeria or voodoo. Both men had received dolls that had affected them to the point where they felt it better to kill themselves rather than stand the torture. Now she wants to save the third man that she knows will eventually receive a package as well, find out who is after the man and stop them. Needless to say no one besides Melina feels like this is a good idea.
This is book 2 in the Messenger series and we pick up with Melina and her friends about 6 months after the last book. Melina and Ted Goodnight are still dating and getting further attached to each other. Alex the vampire is having a craving for someone special and Melina’s roommate, Norah, is frightened of going outside, ever. Melina’s werewolf friend Paul is having issues with his pack and his girlfriend Meredith but everyone decides to pitch in and help when Melina starts having issues with the bad guys of the book.
For some reason I didn’t find Melina all that interesting in this book. She definitely had her moments but she seems so much more reserved in this book than she did in the last. Granted the story itself was less action-packed but she was having a lot of stress and it almost seeped into me as a reader…which I didn’t particularly care for.
I really liked Ted again in this book – he’s just a nice guy and I loved how he helped and “put up with” Melina when he could have just as easily said “see ya.” He’s a great character. With Paul and Meredith we were given a bit of information about them but it was a tad confusing and I’m not sure why it was added except to set things up for the next book? IDK.
Overall the book had a good feel to it and I liked it, it just didn’t bowl me over.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The Series:
You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place
This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
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