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maesreadingworld's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this book! Harper Connelly & Tolliver are great characters with with in-depth looks at them selves & into the lives of the mysteries they are solving by finding missing people that are dead. The book has many turns & twists, it keeps you guessing till the very end who the killer is! I found it very fascinating & hard to put down! A great book if you love mysteries!
rachelreadsravenously's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars!
“I love the South, don’t get me wrong; but it does lag behind the times in social developments.”
The second book in a series of four, you must read Grave Sight before reading this book. Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver travel the US, using Harper's ability to find dead bodies and to know how they died as a means of employment. This came about when Harper was struck by lightning when she was a teenager. Harper and Tolliver are called to Memphis for a grave reading in an old cemetery. While there Harper discovers the body of an eleven year old girl that she had searched for before.
Now the mystery begins as it was obvious someone put the body there for her to find, and instead of a random stranger having taken the girl, it's someone close to home. Tied up in the case, Harper and Tolliver are stuck in Memphis and are further entwined in the case when another body shows up in the same grave, someone they know.
I'm going to say this in the nicest way possible, while I like these books and they're a wonderful urban fantasy guilty pleasure, I think that Charlaine Harris isn't a very good writer. I'm sorry! But the way she writes almost excludes feelings, skipping around settings in a sentence where I have to go back and reread them because I missed it it was so quick. In fact, a ghost showed up and I had no clue he was a ghost until she explicitly said so four pages later! I guess what I'm trying to say is she isn't always very clear with her writing.
“Nothing could stop tragedy from visiting your home. The angel of death would not pass over, leaving you unscathed, no matter how large your house was."
Now here's a small spoiler I'm not tagging: I went into this series knowing that a romantic relationship developed between Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver. And while it doesn't bother me I could see how people would be a little creeped out by it, especially since they refer to each other as brother and sister in the books. But since I knew going in I felt it was fairly obvious what was developing since the beginning, and I'm not really creeped out by it because they aren't blood related. It was interesting to see Harper's revelation of her feelings in this book and I really want to see how she'll handle it in the next book.
As for the mystery, it was slow and came together all too quickly at the end. As all of Ms. Harris's books do. At this point I'm not reading for the mystery, I'm reading for the character development and the use of Harper's abilities and how they affect her life. That's the part I enjoy about these books.
So remember everyone, 3 stars means I liked it! Don't pity the 3 star rating, I still very much enjoyed! I'll continue the series as I am intrigued by these characters.
“I love the South, don’t get me wrong; but it does lag behind the times in social developments.”
The second book in a series of four, you must read Grave Sight before reading this book. Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver travel the US, using Harper's ability to find dead bodies and to know how they died as a means of employment. This came about when Harper was struck by lightning when she was a teenager. Harper and Tolliver are called to Memphis for a grave reading in an old cemetery. While there Harper discovers the body of an eleven year old girl that she had searched for before.
Now the mystery begins as it was obvious someone put the body there for her to find, and instead of a random stranger having taken the girl, it's someone close to home. Tied up in the case, Harper and Tolliver are stuck in Memphis and are further entwined in the case when another body shows up in the same grave, someone they know.
I'm going to say this in the nicest way possible, while I like these books and they're a wonderful urban fantasy guilty pleasure, I think that Charlaine Harris isn't a very good writer. I'm sorry! But the way she writes almost excludes feelings, skipping around settings in a sentence where I have to go back and reread them because I missed it it was so quick. In fact, a ghost showed up and I had no clue he was a ghost until she explicitly said so four pages later! I guess what I'm trying to say is she isn't always very clear with her writing.
“Nothing could stop tragedy from visiting your home. The angel of death would not pass over, leaving you unscathed, no matter how large your house was."
Now here's a small spoiler I'm not tagging: I went into this series knowing that a romantic relationship developed between Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver. And while it doesn't bother me I could see how people would be a little creeped out by it, especially since they refer to each other as brother and sister in the books. But since I knew going in I felt it was fairly obvious what was developing since the beginning, and I'm not really creeped out by it because they aren't blood related. It was interesting to see Harper's revelation of her feelings in this book and I really want to see how she'll handle it in the next book.
As for the mystery, it was slow and came together all too quickly at the end. As all of Ms. Harris's books do. At this point I'm not reading for the mystery, I'm reading for the character development and the use of Harper's abilities and how they affect her life. That's the part I enjoy about these books.
So remember everyone, 3 stars means I liked it! Don't pity the 3 star rating, I still very much enjoyed! I'll continue the series as I am intrigued by these characters.
angelbabe_cj's review against another edition
3.0
This book was good, interesting and I found the case the book was set around to be interesting but somewhat predictable. Nicely told, Harper Conelly is a good lead with an interesting personality and set of flaws.
lindaunconventionalbookworms's review against another edition
3.0
Yeah, Harper sure is not Sookie! And the whole plot is quite easy to see through.
yooliahzwei's review against another edition
4.0
It wasn't somthing you'd stay up late to finish reading, but still, 100% fun, and I love the heroine and plot!
angeltrin1's review against another edition
4.0
Love the writing in this sequel, the story just keep getting more interesting!
graculus's review against another edition
4.0
Harper has a special gift, in that she can find dead bodies but can also tell how they died. At the beginning of Grave Surprise, she's been asked to come and test her gift against the inhabitants of a 200-year old graveyard where the record of their respective causes of death has recently been found. However, what Harper finds there is a corpse planted much more recently, the body of a missing child who she had been involved in searching for two years earlier.
Although Harris is better known for her books featuring Sookie Stackhouse, I think I actually like this series better. In Grave Surprise, Harper is particularly intriguing and easy to empathise with, particularly as she tries to come to terms with being thought either a fraud or complicit in the death of the missing child. Meanwhile, she's also grappling with the fact that though she was brought up with the man who is now her manager (since his father married her mother) they really aren't blood relatives and she may well be attracted to him. The series continues in [b:An Ice Cold Grave|140097|An Ice Cold Grave (Harper Connelly Mystery, Book 3)|Charlaine Harris|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1211564165s/140097.jpg|3159808], which I'll be looking forward to, and I hope it continues beyond that as well...
Although Harris is better known for her books featuring Sookie Stackhouse, I think I actually like this series better. In Grave Surprise, Harper is particularly intriguing and easy to empathise with, particularly as she tries to come to terms with being thought either a fraud or complicit in the death of the missing child. Meanwhile, she's also grappling with the fact that though she was brought up with the man who is now her manager (since his father married her mother) they really aren't blood relatives and she may well be attracted to him. The series continues in [b:An Ice Cold Grave|140097|An Ice Cold Grave (Harper Connelly Mystery, Book 3)|Charlaine Harris|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1211564165s/140097.jpg|3159808], which I'll be looking forward to, and I hope it continues beyond that as well...