Grave Reservations: A Novel

by Cherie Priest

“Delightful.” —The New York Times Book Review

A psychic travel agent and a Seattle PD detective solve a murder in this quirky mystery in the vein of Lisa Lutz’s The Spellman Files and Charlaine Harris’s Aurora Teagarden series.

Meet Leda Foley: devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. When Leda, sole proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, her life changes in ways she couldn’t have predicted.

After watching his original plane blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack.

Despite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees for a secret reason: her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Leda’s psychic abilities couldn’t help the case several years before, but she’s been honing her skills and drawing a crowd at her favorite bar’s open-mic nights, where she performs Klairvoyant Karaoke—singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people’s personal effects. Now joined by a rag-tag group of bar patrons and pals alike, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer—and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.

• ISBN10: 1982168897
• ISBN13: 9781982168896
• Publish Date: 26 October 2021
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 1 April 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Grave Reservations is a promising start to a new paranormal cozy mystery series by Cherie Priest. Released 26th Oct 2021 by Simon & Schuster on their Atria imprint, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback format due out summer 2022. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats, it makes it so easy to find info with the search function.

This is such a well written, quirky, and genuinely funny story. The main protagonist is a travel agent working in her own agency alongside her undependable unasked for sixth-sense clairvoyant talent. She gets a very strong "feeling" about one of her clients and changes his travel plans, potentially saving his life in the process when his original plane bursts into flames on the runway, without him inside it. He's a police detective and, when he returns home, convinces her to try to help him with a stalled-out cold case he's been working on.

I liked that she has a good relationship with her best friend Niki who also helps her uncover clues and isn't afraid to drag her off for a drink or three if she's getting too wrapped up in her own head (she has some unresolved trauma from the loss of a partner some years earlier). The disparate threads entwine more closely throughout the book into a clever and satisfying denouement and resolution. Her cooperative work with police detective Grady is very well written and it's a lot of fun to read their interactions. I really really liked it a lot that there wasn't any insta-romance or foreshadowed attraction between Grady & Leda - they're colleagues at least for the present.

Four stars. The author is adept, the mystery is very well constructed, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes next for Leda, Niki, & Grady.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.