Three Days to Dead, by Kelly Meding (REVIEW) — Countdown to...Death. (Again.)

Imagine having three days left to live... knowing that 72 hours was all the time you had left, and that once those 72 somewhat-normal hours had elapsed?

 

Your time would simply be up.

 

Game Over.

 

Now, imagine that same scenario... but spending it in a stranger's body, instead of yours. 

 

Your thoughts, feelings and emotions—in someone else's shell. 

 

But, wait, there’s more. The three-day period isn't yours to enjoy (hugging loved ones, partying, having wild monkey sex). 

 

No, you have a mission: finding out who killed you (the event which necessitated your thoughts migrating to another still-functioning body, in the first place) and why... then trying to set everything (aside from your own death, which unfortunately can’t be undone) back to rights. 

 

(Okay. That's all.)

 

That’s the situation bounty hunter Evangeline (Evy) Stone finds herself in, in Kelly Meding's Three Days to Dead. 

 

 

After spending the last few years as part of a bounty hunting trio—destroying evil supernatural creatures like ghouls and goblins to keep the rest of humanity safe—Evy is tired.

 

But not so much to find herself waking up in the morgue—in the body of another woman (who had obviously also been recently dead). 

 

Worse, although Evy remembers who she is, she has no idea whose body she's now inhabiting... or how she got there. 

 

Getting in contact with her friends is the logical next step, but that proves tricky—her team members have been killed, too. 

 

And it seems like everyone else she knew or worked with are either out hunting the mysterious killers, or have gone to ground for their own safety. 

 

Something very, very bad is happening, and Evy has walked right back into it. 

The only person she can find is Wyatt, her former handler—"Charlie" to the "Angels", if you will—but he doesn't know much more than she does.

 

What follows is sometimes frantic and other times achingly slow, as Evy and company try to figure out just what, exactly, is going on, as well as trying to stay a step ahead of the game. 

 

Their efforts take them all over the city, to places and meetings with beings they never even knew existed. 

 

Meanwhile, the clock continues ticking down, hurtling them all toward the end that—for Evy, at least—has been preordained.

 

 

Even though Three Days to Dead  had a slower beginning, for me—I didn't really get into it until about forty pages in—it was a fast-paced and fascinating read, once it got going. 

 

Once I understood who the good/bad characters were and what roles everyone played in this world, I found it impossible to put down and wound up enjoying it immensely. 

 

It’s an intelligent story and the plot holds together well.

 

The depth of emotion surprise me, given the very limited timeframe the story plays out in... with fear, rage, passion, love, and jealousy all adding real feels to the action.

 

Three Days to Dead is a story not only of recrimination and guilt, but also redemption. And in the end, it's even about learning to love, against all odds. 

Who among us couldn’t use a little more of that in our lives? 

I highly recommend this unusual book.
~GlamKitty