Talking with the Dead

Kat Parker #2

by K.L. Phelps

Having recently come to terms with her psychic gift of communicating with the comatose, all Kat Parker wanted was a bit of relaxation and to replace her broken cell phone. But her uncle's death reveals a new and potentially dangerous wrinkle to her abilities — she can see and talk with the dead.

Phoneless, fed up, and worried for her sanity, Kat is still determined to help her uncle. Discovering he had more than a few secrets, she embarks on a treasure hunt for the one object she believes will help him rest in peace. Standing in her way is the CIA, a Mexican drug cartel kill squad, a group of mask-wearing gang members, and a wild alligator determined to eat her pet turtle.

As things spiral out of control, the absurdity of it all has Kat wondering if she hasn’t already gone insane, if she’ll be forever saddled with babysitting her uncle’s spirit, and if she should even bother to replace her phone.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Paranormal, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Cozy

388 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 26, 2014

About the author

K.L. Phelps never wanted to be a cop, fireman or baseball player. He fell in love with books at a very early age and (aside from the summer of 1977 when he wanted to be Luke Skywalker) he never wanted to be anything other than a writer. Somehow he took a left when he should have gone right (or write) and spent 17+ years as an oncology nurse. He is now back to pursuing this childhood dream. Thriller, suspense, mysteries, paranormal, humor/comedy, there are very few genres that don't interest him and he intends to take a crack at them all.

Reviews

[Kimber · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually hear your brain cells die

After reading book 1 of this series I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue but it had a good plot so I thought I’d move one to book 2. Big mistake. BIG. Kat gets dumber with each page. I mean really really stupid. Jonny her vampire roomie should be renamed Chuckles, since all he did was chuckle, grin and actually fall to the floor once a chapter laughing himself insane. Why the author put a vamp in these book is a mystery because, Jonny is vamp-lite. The only way you know he’s a vamp is because the author keeps telling us he’s a vamp. *yawn*
Helen, Katz best friend just got drunk every time she was inserted into this book. And Damien? I don’t even know his purpose. He’s just the requisite cop. Kat really has no personality, she’s likable, dumb as a box of hair and too stupid to live. Oh and all Kat does is eat. And fat shame, she loves making nasty remarks about fat people and ‘ugly’ people.
If you insist on reading this, be prepared to lose a lot of brain cells. The mystery isn’t that bad, it’s just bogged down by lame undeveloped characters.
What I find most unbelievable and downright shameful is that a woman would write a female character like this. smh

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A benign vampire and a woman who talks to ghosts are an odd combination. This book was supposed to be as funny as the Stephanie Plum books, but I just didn’t feel it. It was readable, but quite easy to put down. The characters were a bit too unreal for my taste.

[Abi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not going to continue with this series. I can't get past the main character (she's childish and irritating), and how little things are being explained (like Las Vegas - what happened?!), or making sense (why include the supernatural stuff if it's so cryptic and underdeveloped?). 2.5 stars.

[Marta Bare · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was entertaining, but I found the cluelessness of the main character annoying after a while.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a spunky, upbeat, somewhat funny vibe to this novel that pleasantly reminded me of the Stephanie Plum series. Unfortunately, banter is just about all that this book has. The plot (more on that later) is very slow to develop and all of the characters seem to be a bit slow in their mental faculties. So despite a really enjoyable beginning, my enthusiasm for the novel quickly waned.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around the newly found power of our heroine to talk to dead people. She hasn’t actually done this at the beginning of the book and everyone (including her vampire roommate who doesn’t appear to have anything vampiric about him) is worried that the power will drive the heroine insane. The heroine is very upset about this possibility—especially the likelihood that ghosts will begin to follow her home. So naturally our heroine visits a cemetery on multiple occasions where she begins interacting with her recently departed Uncle Jimmy.

Lots of people are interested in Uncle Jimmy and they ransack his house searching for something. It never appears to occur to our heroine and her friends until very late in the book that the thing they could be looking for might be her legacy from him, left for her in a safe deposit box. That turns out to be more of a clue than an ending, but by that time I was only completing the book because I’d gone so far with it already. Eventually, they blindly stumble into the endgame, and everyone has a happily ever after (at least until the new book).

There’s nothing wrong with good banter, but a novel has to have a lot more than that to work. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case in this one.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Cass · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/5

[Laura S Fowler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible

This has been the worst book I’ve ever read. Stupid plot. Don’t buy. The heroine is a total airhead. I normally MAKE myself finish a book I’ve purchased. I made an exception for this.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story cracked me up! LOL

[T]

I thought this might be kind of light and entertaining. It is silly drivel; it is repetitive, written like an 11th grader trying to pad a term paper. Stopping now.

[Magi Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t believe how stupid the girl was.

The story line was good, but the main girl was so stupid I can not image any guy wanting to hang out with her. She is self absorbed and a mess. I can not even image a friend wanting to do anything for her. She seems to only care for herself and not any one around her.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

LAUGH OUT LOUD...REALLY?

Do to you ever feel like you live in a bubble and are the epitome of naivety? I ALWAYS feel like that after taking a chance and reading a new (well, new to me!) authors work and absolutely LOVING it! I am in my 'sunset' years (well over 60) and still kick myself sometimes for not being more adventurous. This book, aside from having a really awesome cast of very well developed characters and a really interesting, flowing story line, is SO laugh out loud FUNNY, I almost joined 'pee-boy'! I gotta say I haven't read too many books that were supposed to be funny that made me laugh outloud so hard so many times as this one has. And I read an average of 3-4 books a week, so that's saying something. Although I received this book as an ARK copy, I would pay for it gladly! And this review is as honest as it is long ( I usually leave minimal verbage ie. Ok, good, great, sucks, don't bother, etc, as reviews...need the time to read another book!l). DO NOT miss the chance to make some new 'friends', read a really good mystery, and laugh so hard you'll need a clean pair of undies or you'll not forgive you self! You will not be sorry! Gotta go so I can look up the rest of this series to see if the author is as consistently good as this one.

[Britta · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a kindle first. I had not read the first one, but overall that didn't matter. There were some references to it, but nothing that bothered me not to know while reading this one. Some irritations: Kat's constantly eating junk food, Kat portrayed as a complete ditz, the incessant little jokes (yes, Jonny's just joking, stop pausing to reconsider that)., and the occasional typo/error (wrong tense of the verb, etc). Oh and the book is probably 90% dialogue, which is kind of crazy. Sometimes, I just wanted to tell people to stop talking for 2 damn minutes! Still some loose ends - but I won't go seeing if they get tied up later. All of that said: it was a cute little book, moved quickly (probably due to all that dialogue, and it was fairly low on substance.) It fit the bill for now, when I need light distraction that doesn't make me even angrier at the world. (Though, seriously KL- make Kat less of a caricature. She's currently this food-driven young girl who drools over most men but rarely makes a sensible thought.) I guess there was much to dislike in principle...but it had enough 'candy' aspect that it was very readable. Which led to its final "it was ok" rating.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was chock-full of twisty surprises, almost too many to enumerate. There are a few grammar errors, but not so many that it destroyed my enjoyment of the adventures of this dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks heroine who just happens to be able to talk to comatose and dead people. Not that they listen to her, anyway. She shares a house with a vampire who loves to cook and has a pet snapping turtle (I don't know if that is the breed or just its habits.) She befriends an alligator, keeps shooting holes in her domicile and eats ravenously. She gets involved with lucadores, gangsters and hoods while trying to solve the mystery of her deceased "Uncle Jimmy's" unrest. I chuckled in a bunch of places, and am considering reading the first book in the series.

[Ambrosia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm ambivalent. I don't usually like pratfall style heroines. Who stumble from disaster to disaster, surviving only through luck and by being saved by hunky men. And it's hard to see whether this "heroine" has redeeming qualities because she's so focused on eating. When she can focus at all.

But she does seem to have a good heart. And half her idiocy is just to torture her friends.

And there's something engaging about the story. I'm not sure why I finished it - maybe because it was a quick, easy read without real angst. Maybe I needed that escape from reality

Regardless it was a quick, mindless break. Not sure I'd pay for this book, but it was entertaining while it lasted.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well the main character Kat is a ditz who seems to know virtually
nothing about normal daily activities like cooking and cleaning as
well as charging a cell phone. However her comments and observations
on her life are really funny as well as the various people/animals
who 'pop in' and out of her life.....the alligator who has an unhealthy
interest in Kat as well as all the other assorted groups of 'people'
who seem to follow her around and also trash her house on a regular
basis. And lest we forget the live in vampire who is really along for
the ride!
Enjoy the book, try not to read too much into it. It is a book that is
funny and I really liked it!

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mildly entertaining. But Kat is hands down the dumbest heroine I have ever read. I get that it is supposed to be funny and parts of it were but she is literally the stupidest person i have ever read about which made it hard to identify with or like her. I did enjoy her obsession with food and her interactions with Snappy and Chompers and that would have been the right amount of silly for amusement but her stupidity was such that she sometimes struggled to understand the meaning of basic words which detracted from my engagement with the story. But weirdly as much as Kat's stupidity annoyed me I am still kind of interested in reading more.

[Keith Withers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird but entertainjng

What a weird story. When a friend of Kat Parker dies she is put in an awful situation. Suddenly she discovers that she can still see and speak to the deceased man. It is possible that he is unable to 'pass over' until he has achieved his goal from life. With a variety of agents, from a number of organisations, following Kat's every move, believing she has knowledge of what the deceased man has left behind him, she advances on a long series of adventures with the assistance of a few close friends to try and help her former friend complete his mission and 'pass over' to his next life.

[Kiki Z · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is somehow worse than the first one. Kat is an idiot. She can't even figure out how to charge a phone. Again, she's a modern woman in a modern world; I know people who don't use smartphones but still understand the basics. All she does is eat and make dumb decisions.

On that note, a solid 50% of this book revolved around food, I swear. The mystery could've have been condensed into 50 pages for all the information we found out. There's a lot of extraneous bull going on here, and the characters aren't interacting in new ways for us to need to read it. Kat is made fun of a million times in the same way by the same people. Did anyone edit this?

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me laugh out loud and most books don't do that. The characters are well developed and the story line is well planned out. I didn't want to put the book down. It was so well written and so funny I just wanted to see what the main Kat Parker was going to get herself into next.

I read a lot of book that take a lot of concentration to keep track of what is happening, and this book was a pleasant respite from that. It is definitely a quick read. I would highly recommend this book to everyone because it just such a lark.

[Patti Summers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this one first even though it is second in the series. Absolutely loved it, can read alone but you want some back ground will need to read the first one.
So this is all about a young girl named Kat who lives with a according to her a hot vampire. She inherits a house from her dead husband who she doesn't even remember. And then the fun begins. She has different gangs breaking into her house and following her. She has no idea why they are doing this and even the gangs have no clue what they are looking for. And the fun begins.

[Krystyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The magical alligator is a masterpiece

Awesome! The disaster known as Kat is back! Hilarious! Take a dead family friend, the CIA, two different gangs, a ghost, Snappy the turtle, Chompers the alligator and Kat and what do you have? A great read that will make you laugh out loud. Watch as she tries to navigate around the human obstacles to unravel the mystery of why the family friend's death has caused everyone to spy on her. The characters just get better and better and the plot is not only skillfully woven but also hilarious.

[L Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny Crazy Mystery

Laugh-out-loud adventures of a young gal with memory loss, but the new gift of being able to talk, not only with comatose people, but apparently ghosts as well. As Kat goes to the funeral of her “uncle”, she becomes the target of three groups of people searching for ... something, no one quite knows what. Her vampire friend Jonny, and her “giant” friend Damion try to protect her from the “bad guys” and from herself. Great mystery, fun characters, and a LO.t of laughter.

[Colin Parfitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is so desperately “zany”.

There’s an attractive woman who can talk to the dead, her dead uncle, a (handsome) vampire roommate (although being a vampire has no affect on the story), a (handsome) detective, a (beautiful) best friend, two Secret Service agents, a (handsome) pool boy, a man with no neck, a team of Mexican wrestlers, Panama gangsters, and an alligator in the swimming pool.

All the characters are either beautiful or have a distinctive feature.

There’s just too much thrown at the story, and the plot needs to be painstakingly explained at the end.

[Harold Force · Rating 4 out of 5]

Be patient, you will get to the end!

What if the dead can not rest? Until all past events are resolved. And what happened to the rest of Uncle Jimmy 's brain?And who are these people who keep breaking in - and shooting into the ceiling and the doors? And then there's the alligator in the swimming pool - and who is caught half way under the back door. And who listens when spoken to? Then there's the hunky detective and the vampire who can go out in the sun. Oh, and our hero's lady needs to get off diet soda as it's worse than "real" soda. Honest!

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kat is a half done trope for a cool girl, but without the smarts. Helen is the real "cool girl" - smart, good looking, eats a lot, drinks a lot.
Johnny and Damian are just sketches.
Chompers had a nice start of a story, but then it was evicted suddenly without explanation (the author did not know what to do with it??)
The entire story was like a Stanley Laurel & Oliver Hardy movie, everybody keeps tripping over and falling onto their faces.
Oh, and there is very little talking with the dead done.

[Bette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another story with Kat and her friends. The difference is that her abilities are expanding, from talking to the comatose she is now able to talk to the dead.
Her Uncle Jimmy died and there are three groups that are following her to find his secret. The problem is that NO ONE knows what they are looking for.

Fun, fast read with engaging characters! Most of all I enjoyed the magical alligator, sorry you’ll have to read the book to find out what I mean

[Meehlticket · Rating 4 out of 5]

K.L. Phelps' books just get better and better!

This is the second book I have read by K. L. Phelps. I laughed my way through it, disturbing my sleeping husband and my dozing dog. I must admit the exchange between Kat and the bank teller was the best. Haven't you ever wanted to respond to a statement made into a question just the same way? Very enjoyable book, I'm going hunting four another right now, well, after getting a snack first. Perhaps a pizza and diet coke?

[Dr. Simone J. Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely Zany Book

I missed the first book so I don't know how Kat picked up a vampire and a detective of her own. The bad guy characters are hysterically amusing. Kat in the cemetery demanding that her uncle come out had me rolling on the floor laughing, especially when the woman backed away and ran. And the lawn truck spraying the cemetery while the mail truck ran through the cemetery spewing mail everywhere. Now I'm off to read the next great adventure.

[Robbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this book with the idea that it would be similar to "Getting A Head". I was wrong. Unfortunately Kat Parker may be the most irritating protagonist I've read in any series and her friend Jonny wasn't much better. I have two requirements 0f series characters: they have to be intelligent and likeable. Kat didn't meet either. I rate this one 2 stars. (To the author: I'm sorry I wasn't able to enjoy your book.)

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A supernatural trip to crazy town

K L Phelps presents us with a plethora of nutty characters...Chompers being my favorite...but perhaps this book is a bit over the top. I recommend reading this when you want something funny with a dash of weird. Being a Houston resident myself I can vouch for the authenticity of the setting...Phelps does know Houston so maybe he knows more about the supernatural than I imagine.