This book dragged at times. I feel like it would have been better as two books: a fictional (or maybe autobiographical?) memoir about a girl whose brother dies; and a book about an archaeologist who sees ghosts. Some very good writing, especially in the flashbacks, but too long and slow overall. ( )

Ghosts and memories haunt Ren, an archaeologist who steeps herself in her work but avoids the same sort of passion in relationships. When evidence surfaces that points to an ancient artist whose bowls Ren has encountered before, she drops everything to spend months at the site of the dig. But the artist is not the only character with whom Ren becomes enamored; she also finds herself falling for Silas, a fellow archaeologist at the dig. Ren must discern how reliable her ghosts really are and decide for herself which reality she will live in.

After Gin Phillips' tender first novel, The Well and the Mine, this one was sort of a let-down. For one, she completely wore out the noun "thigh" and all forms of the verb "slide." Hands slid all over bodies and objects, and thighs received constant attention. I know, for example, that on Ren's left thigh are a scar, a bruise, and Silas's hand. Also, the title - which caught my interest before I'd read her other book - didn't really end up having much to do with the book. But the real reason I was disappointed is that the idea for the story is actually really good, and I think a writer with Phillips' chops could have executed it much more elegantly. Maybe she was working under a deadline?

I want to be a Gin Phillips fan. She's local. She's funny. She's insightful. But I might need a third book to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke. ( )

Ren Taylor has been haunted for most of her life. Ever since her older brother was killed in a car accident when she was twelve, he has been lingering on the fringes of her life, a comfort to her as her family disintegrates in his absence. As an adult, Ren becomes an archaeologist bent on re-creating the stories of people who lived ages ago. It's then that she discovers that Scott isn't the only ghost she can see. A girl, an artist of a long dead race, reveals herself to Ren and leads her to a career-making discovery. Years pass with no more sign of the artist's work until the portentous phone call of another archaeologist who may just have unearthed the key to the rest of Ren's artist's history. When Ren joins the dig, her ghosts are closer than ever, but clinging to them might cost her a real chance at love in the here and now.

Come In and Cover Me has most certainly cemented Gin Phillips as one of my favorite authors. While it might not quite equal her debut effort, The Well and the Mine, which would be incredibly hard to equal, Come In and Cover Me has Phillips' talent on full display.

First of all, the setting is stunning. I have to admit that I don't read many books set in the American Southwest, and Come In and Cover Me practically has me wanting to go pay it a visit. Phillips' descriptions of both the unexpectedly lush canyon and the desert terrain where they are digging are absolutely stellar. It's not often that I'm so captivated by a place in fiction that I wouldn't mind spending the day digging for bones and pottery in the hot desert wind. The days and nights Ren spends at the ranch digging for, what is for them, buried treasure and discovering a romance blooming between herself and the other archaeologist on site, Silas, practically glow with the kind of surreality I associate with good memories.

Next up are the characters, each of which is carefully crafted. Ren is a tightly wrapped package that spends the entire book being unwrapped. One moment she is prickly and closed off, the next she is alive with passion, and still the next, she is desperate for love. She's as often unlikeable as she is loveable and sympathetic. In other words, she's entirely realistic. Silas is Ren's near opposite, an open book eager to discover Ren's past by sharing his own. When it comes to work, she's driven by people, and he's driven by data, and their mostly friendly arguments and testing of each other is pitch perfect. Their chemistry is instant, but their relationship has a slow build that satisfies. Both of the main characters are great, and Phillips gives them a strong supporting cast, too. Ed, a retired government employee who took on archaeology later in life, has a straight-faced sense of humor that entertains, and Paul, the young wanna-be archaeologist is both earnest and awkward alongside the rest, and creates a natural avenue for answering some readers' questions about archaeology. The characters' interactions are so natural that you can't help wanting to pull up a chair to their campfire to enjoy their company awhile.

Finally, Phillips reveals herself to be gifted at weaving many stories into one. The way the book unfolds slowly unpacking Ren's stored-up grief while examining the scars and struggles it leaves her facing in the present all while opening up a window on the life of Ren's artist is downright artful. The shifts in the story are never jarring, and while the talking to ghosts is a little odd at first, Ren's interactions with them reveal her passions and the lessons she has yet to learn. The way Phillips peels off layer after layer to get at the heart of Ren's story reminds me of another of my favorite authors, Maggie O'Farrell.

Come In and Cover Me is a well-crafted narrative, seasoned with history and magical realism, that explores one memorable character's journey out of grief and into learning to love again. ( )

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Description: A specialist in prehistoric ceramics, Ren Taylor launched her archaeological career with the unearthing of a stunning set of bowls in southern New Mexico. The bowls seem to belong to one remarkable 12th-century artist, and Ren is convinced they hold the secret to understanding a woman who died a thousand years earlier. Now in 2009, archaeologist Silas Cooper invites Ren to the remote Cañada Rosa, where he’s discovered more evidence of her artist.

Ren has an unusual connection to the dead, a connection that’s revealed during her stay in this lush canyon disconnected from the outside world. When she was twelve years old, her brother was killed in a car accident. Yet he did not vanish completely. Ever since then, he has been a not-quite-concrete presence, inserting himself into the quiet, still moments of the day, nothing more than the snatch of a song or a silhouette in the moonlight.

Ren is someone who lives with her ghosts. And now, at the canyon, she starts to see her artist, a young woman with dark eyes and strong hands, shaping bowls and tending fires before she disappears into the wind. She sees a woman in a macaw-feather skirt walking barefoot through the sand. The ghosts are holding out clues, and Ren is tempted to immerse herself entirely in their past. But then there is Silas, a man who has reached Ren in a way no one has managed since her brother died. Ultimately Ren begins to suspect that she must choose the ghosts or Silas, the past or the present.

Ren’s story explores the ways we connect to each other and the ways we keep each other at a distance. The novel revolves around our bonds to those we’ve loved and lost, the bonds of family, and the bonds we have with those who have come before us.

My Review: Great Literature it isn't. Great Writing likewise. It's a fun way to spend a day.

Phillips does something I haven't seen before: She makes Ren, her heroine, respond to the ghosts that clutter up her life exactly as one does to the teenagers that clutter up parents' lives...slightly impatient, slightly amused, mostly befuddled by behaviors that seem to us, the observers, so self-evidently self-defeating. That gets the book a quarter star.

Then Phillips creates the swoon-worthy Silas. My favorite porn star is "named" Silas. It was the work of but a moment to slot him in the mental movie of the book, the one I always cast and direct with every book I've ever read. *swoon* Another quarter star.

The ghostly Kaffeeklatsch of pot-ladies made me grin. A half-star for making them all so cute.

And a half-star added to the baseline chick-lit two for the pots, the archaeology, and the artistic trappings. Loved those.

I liked this entertainment. Provided you don't approach it with some outsized expectations, you might too. ( )

Possible spoilers. I don't think I will give too much away, but I just wanted to put that out there.

This was selected for my book group for July, and I was initially very excited to read this because Gin Phillips is a Birmingham author. I've never read The Well and the Mine, though everyone I've met who has read it has raved about it. This is the first book I've ever read by her.

My initial reaction to this book was that this was a difficult subject matter to handle. I'm not up to date on archaeology, much less the Chaco culture, or the Mimbres culture of New Mexico and Arizona. I had to constantly interrupt my reading to go online and do a little research so I could at least grasp the concept of whom or what the characters were referencing to. It wasn't always fun. Most of the time, I had to scan through dry text just to pick out a few interesting tidbits. Points were taken off for that.

Then there's the subject of the main character, Ren. Everyone in my book club would agree that Ren wasn't very likeable, she was cold, disconnected, and we feared, a little bit nuts. We were more enamoured with Silas, Ren's total opposite, a warm, adorable character who was an open book. In fact, I admitted openly that I was a little bit in love with Silas. He was definitely a character easy to like.

It seems there are more questions than answers in regards to this book. Everything was open for discussion. Did Ren really see Scott, or was he a figment of her imagination? Did Ren's parent's pull away from her, or was it in fact Ren who stopped communicating with her parents? How was Ren able to understand the parrot artist and Non once they started acknowledging her presence?

It's a wonderfully written book, but too many details cloud the story. I was getting huffy towards the end because everything was so convoluted and the book kept switching to different time frames. I didn't know what was real and what was imagined by Ren.

It is thought-provoking in many places, and I'll puzzle over this book for weeks to come. The ending was a relief, though.

I look forward to reading The Well and the Mine. ( )