Grave Secret (Harper Connelly, #4)

by Charlaine Harris

Lightning-struck sleuth Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver must face their family's troubled past in this gripping mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris.

Taking a break from looking for the dead, Harper and Tolliver decide to visit the two little girls they both think of as sisters. But as they travel to Texas, memories of their horrible childhood resurface...

To make matters worse, Tolliver learns his father is out of jail and trying to reestablish contact with other family members. Tolliver wants no part of the man--but he may not have a choice in the matter. Soon, family secrets ensnare them both, as Harper finally discovers what happened to her missing sister, Cameron, so many years before. And what she finds out will change her world forever.

• ISBN10: 1410420566
• ISBN13: 9781410420565
• Publish Date: 1 October 2009
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Wheeler Publishing
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 417
• Language: English

Reviews

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

Grave Secret nearly gave me whiplash with all of its twists and turns. I would be looking in one direction and then get blindsided by something else. The first three installments in this series had been building towards this all along, but I wasn’t expecting such a punch. Grave Secret started out with Harper on a job, just like the other installments, but soon became about Harper’s missing sister and her family backstory. Harper’s family background had been disclosed little by little throughout the series, like breadcrumbs leading to this installment and Grave Secret opened the floodgates.

[celinenyx]

Well, that was a weird journey.

Grave Secret is the final book in the Harper Connelly series, this time combining both a mystery as we're used to with some personal issues. Harper can sense the dead, and she's called to a farm to inspect some graves. This leads to a chain of events which endangers both Harper's and Tolliver's lives, and those around them.

I'm not very sure what to say about this book. Usually I love Charlaine Harris novels, even though they're sometimes a bit too obvious or just (sorry) not that intelligent. Grave Secret however crossed the line of credibility though, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I usually do with Harris' books.

One of my main gripes is Harper's reaction on death threats. And we're not talking about verbal/written threats here, we're talking about actual people with actual guns shooting at her. You'd think she'd leave the area. You'd think she'd go BATSHIT CRAZY because OMG there is someone SHOOTING at her and trying to KILL her. But nope. Cold badass that she is, the only concession she makes is getting a different hotel room, a few floors up. And she keeps thinking no one can get to her there. What?

Also, her relationship with Tolliver is still icky. I can't help it. It's just weird.

The mystery was interesting, but often takes the back-burner over the personal plot line. Tolliver's no-good dad has been released from prison and tries to get into contact with Tolliver and Harper's little sisters. In the end both get their resolution, but not in a way that was satisfactory for me. There were quite a few plot points raised yet never fully explained.

As far as the series goes, Grave Secret is the weakest book. Not even the appearance of Bernardo could save it for me.

[ibeforem]

This is the final book in in the Harper Connelly series, and it’s more about Harper’s family than any sort of mystery. Not that Harper’s family isn’t already swallowed by the mystery of her sister Cameron’s disappearance. Harper and Tolliver take their budding (unconventional and unpopular) relationship to Texas to visit their little sisters, but an unfortunate incident means that they are going to be stuck there a while. Is someone after Harper? Or is Tolliver the target?

I thought Harris did a good job of wrapping up this series. Questions that have been unanswered for the previous 3 books are finally answered, and in ways that make sense but are also surprising. The only part that seemed a little too convenient was the seemingly unconnected hiring of Harper by some people with a tie to her past. This is one of Harris’s odder series, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I’m glad she wrote (what I think is) the final book and closed it out.

[Linda]

This whole series was actually quite disturbing! Incestuous relationships made it difficult to read!