Grave Sight (Harper Connelly, #1)

by Charlaine Harris

The first Harper Connelly mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris!

Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who’s passed, and share their very last moment. Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver are experts at getting in, getting paid, and then getting out of town fast—because the people who hire Harper have a funny habit of not really wanting to know what she has to tell them.

At first, the little Ozarks town of Sarne seems like no exception.  A teenage girl has gone missing, but the secrets of her death—and the secrets of the town—are deep enough that even Harper’s special ability can’t uncover them.  With hostility welling up all around them, she and Tolliver would like nothing better than to be on their way.  But then another woman is murdered.  And the killer’s not finished yet...

• ISBN10: 0425212890
• ISBN13: 9780425212899
• Publish Date: 26 September 2006 (first published 1 October 2005)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Berkley Publishing Corporation,U.S.
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780425212899

Reviews

[celinenyx]

Instead of the full-on supernatural romp of the Sookie Stackhouse books, the Harper Connelly ones are more rooted in reality. They feature heroine Harper that has been struck by lightning when she was young. Together with her stepbrother Tolliver she travels the country to help people: by finding dead bodies.

Grave Sight was a short but entertaining intro in a different series by Charlaine Harris. It has a touch of the paranormal with the heroine, but otherwise features the normal world. It is more paranormal mystery than anything, and readers should be aware that Grave Sight doesn't nearly has the scope or feel of the Sookie Stackhouse books.

When I first started reading I kind of missed the town of Bon Temps with its quirky inhabitants and Sookie's homeliness. Within a dozen pages though Ms Harris's simple language wrapped me up like in a warm blanket, and I got invested in Harper's story.

Ms Harris is only an average mystery writer in my opinion; it's not as if the killer is that obvious, but the experienced reader will figure it out before the end. The clues aren't that cleverly hidden, and the resolution could have had more impact. What made Grave Sight a four-star read instead of the average three-star one is the way this book just made me happy. When I'm in a particularly stressed or feel down, I'll pick up one of Harris's books and I'll get wrapped up in the utter normalcy of these people. They get dressed, watch TV, read books, have pointless conversations... For some reason the realness of their lives makes for cosier reading. As a reader you can either have my reaction to this normalcy, or you will find it incredibly dull and repetitive. I happen to find it really calming.

Though not in the same calibre as the mid-early Sookie books, I got everything I was looking for from Grave Sight.

[inlibrisveritas]

I really liked this book. Harris' writing is really enjoyable all around for me, since I've read her Sookie Stackhouse books. So it had that same comfortable feel to it.

[SilverThistle]

This was the first Charlaine Harris book I'd read so didn't know what to expect. Story-wise it's a good mystery and I didn't guess the ending until...well, the end. I just never really felt connected to the characters though. Harper is really hard to figure out, one minute she's streetsmart and mouthy, the next she's a wreck and can't function because she's like a little-girl-lost. I'm not sure if this will be explained a little more in the next books but so far she's not that likeable. Her brother Tolliver is a bit of a mystery too and I'm still not sure what makes him tick.

It's a good book but I'm hoping it will become a bit more fleshed out in the rest of the series. I was hoping for more of her special ability of being able to 'speak' to the departed and the story did revolve around this, but there wasn't very much of that side of things this time.

It held my interest to find out where things were headed all the way through so I'd recommend it, but it's a fairly quick read and if I'm honest not a lot happened in this one.

[Linda]

This is a series I got because I love the Sookie Stackhouse series. Very far from both the story-telling and the character-building of the Southern Vampires!

[ibeforem]

Harper and Tolliver are interesting characters. A little dark, a little moody, a little lonely. Dedicated to each other. This series appears to be a bit more serious than Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, but this initial book is just as good. I had almost guessed what the deal was with the relationship between Dell and Teenie, but there was a twist there I wasn’t expecting! I also read the little bit of the second book that was at the end, which I rarely do, and I think the second book will be as good as the first.