Abandon (Abandon Trilogy #1)

My rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Pierce Oliviera died.

She fell in a pool chasing after a helpless animal and drowned. Her father, dutifully as ever, typing, texting, e-mailing, and yelling away in a conference call never noticed a thing. Never fear though! The helpless animal was saved, a life was spared and all is well. And so it appeared, as Pierce went onto the gateway to the afterlife, where the dearly departed loved ones are looked up, directed to different lines, and shuttled onto giant ferryboats. Yes, the underworld is modern! How wickedly wondrous of Meg to include ones I-Pad - after all it really is part of the family, or should be what with the price you shell out for one those ghastly things. Any-who, Pierce always the curious, do good-er blue jay saver, never the jealous home wrecker, disobeys a direct order! Gasp! The results, well disastrous of course.

pierce finds her way out of her line and makes he way to the only familiar face she sees, of course Pierce has yet to realize she is in fact dead and so taps the Ruler of the Underworld on the shoulder then proceeds to buries him on his workmanship, and ask him is the nasty bruise on his face is alright. So what does the man do, well he kidnaps her - and who says history never repeats itself - takes her to his white linen and stone castle where he gives her a stone that is mystically cursed and so naturally changes color when evil is around and is about the size of a same peach. Naturally! Meg you Devil. John basically proposes marriage to the former Prep School daughter of a Wall Street Broker and Pierce cannot possibly deal with both dying and holy matrimony in the same day, so Pierce does the only logical thing she can think of.

She throws hot tea in his face and runs away.

When Pierce wakes in a hospital bed she decides that the 'experience' was an allusion created by the stress of, well you know...dying and so she goes on about her life. That is until her mother comes in her room and presents the mysterious stone, this stone as it turns out proves everything that Pierce had, had confirm by the best doctors the Untied States had to offer was an allusion was actually true. Worse still, Pierce is no longer the same, Ivy-Leaguer debate team captain girl she use to be, her straight A's drop, an incident with a child molesting teacher at her prestigious New York Prep school sends her mother and her back to Huesos, Florida and into the D-Wing where all the screw-ups go to get 'back on track'. Or so says the consulars.

But how does one get over dying and running away from Hades incarnate. Especially seeing as how he keeps showing up everywhere, to his defense, no one sane goes to a cemetery after hours to visit no one during a hurricane warning, then again no one really ever goes to the cemetery at all. After a large catastrophic fight with John that results in the destruction of rather large wrought iron gate, Pierce is left oddly stricken when he tosses her stone across the cemetery grounds and pronounces it 'lost forever'. Then the cemetery curator has it in hands the next ay at school and after a meeting with him answers to long un-answered questions come to light. Pierce is finally ahead of the game, until her consular is murdered by Furies and her ex-con of an Uncle is blamed, her grandmother turns out to be the murderer of Pierce and Jane and oh yeah. The most disturbing: Pierce is kidnapped again, by John.