Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly, #2)

by Charlaine Harris

A bolt of lightning struck Harper Connelly when she was 15, leaving her with a strange spider web of red on her torso and right leg, episodes of weakness, shakes and headaches - and an ability to find dead people. Harper is summoned to Memphis to demonstrate her unique talent, but there are still plenty of sceptics, even as Harper stands atop a grave and announces there are two bodies buried there. The police are convinced there's something fishy going on when the grave is opened to reveal the centuries-dead remains of a man, which they'd expected (that being his grave, after all) and a dead girl, which no one expected - except Harper, of course. And suspicions are raised even further because Harper had failed to find eleven-year-old Tabitha Morgenstern when she was abducted two years before. Harper and Tolliver need to find the real killer to prove Harper's innocence, especially after their nocturnal visit to the cemetery in hopes that Harper can sense something more is followed by the discovery, the following morning, of a third dead body in the grave ...

• ISBN10: 0575082879
• ISBN13: 9780575082878
• Publish Date: 13 March 2008 (first published 1 September 2006)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 December 2016
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Gollancz
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

Grave Surprise was the installment that change the way I viewed the series. There were plenty of words eaten from my first review. And Grave Surprise certainly dispelled the notion of this being a cozy mystery series. The tone shifted to something much more intense and unsettling, more reminiscent of horror.

Grave Surprise was also where romantic shenanigans of a Greg and Marcia Brady variety began to appear. In my review of the first installment, I expressed delight and relief that Harris seems content to have the two main characters remain in a step-sibling role. It was indeed refreshing, until it wasn’t. Ick factor aside, the romance was developed quite nicely. There was plenty of internal struggle, which seemed realistic, given the situation. Once I (and the main character) got past the not-quite-incest aspect of it, it actually turned out to be a quality romance, as one would expect from Harris.

I liked that the mystery in this installment wasn’t built upon something that had happened in the past, before the series began. It wasn’t as if these two characters suddenly sprang to life at the beginning of series. They have a personal and professional lives before it and both were impacting the current events in the book. Just any author couldn’t pull this off, though. If it were executed incorrectly, the reader would be left feeling like they had missed something in a previous installment. But Harris is a master of world building and character development, so she was able to fill in the gaps in a natural and subtle way.

However, the “whodunit” was just too obvious. Before the halfway mark, I had already decided not only the “who” but also the “why”, therefore I quickly became bored with the plot of this installment. Grave Surprise was easily my least favorite book in the series.

[inlibrisveritas]

My rating on this one is a bit odd. I wanted to give a higher rating but some parts of the book really brought it down for me. I enjoyed the overall plot more then the first in the series, and it was a quick and easy read that kept my interest. I did kind of figure out who did it (with some doubts) pretty early on but I don't hold that against the story because I didn't figure out the why at all. The only issues I really had with this were the little conflicting points that most people probably wouldn't notice. Things like the suddenly flip between civil and some what respectful to disdain and joking, it through me off a few times and I had to re-read the conversation to see why exactly it changed. Also at times things changed, nothing big of course but I noticed, things like : 'Did you know that Harper?' 'No.' when in fact she did know it earlier if only mentioned briefly. I know it's not a big deal but it bothered me a lot for some reason. I'm curious as to see what is going to happen to Harper and Tolliver, I find it a bit odd and typically one doesn't switch mental process on who is like a brother or not, unless they had doubts to begin with. But anyway if I see the next book at the library I'll probably pick it up.

[Linda]

Yeah, Harper sure is not Sookie! And the whole plot is quite easy to see through.

[ibeforem]

This one didn’t grab me like the first one did. There was just something missing, but I’m not sure what — some level of involvement. And I was a bit confused about Harper’s new feelings about Tolliver... She sees and treats him like her brother for all these years, and then all of a sudden she has "feelings" for him? That was a little weird, and out of place in this story. But I’ll likely read the third book, because I’m a sheep.