Charlaine Harris

Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries, No. 2)

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 . . .

Grave Surprise

Lucia Correa

4 Stars rounded up from 3.5 stars for audiobook.

I am re-reading this series, but this time the audiobooks. Same reader as the first book - actually they keep the same narrator throughout the 4 book series (Alyssa Bresnahan). I like her. Does she have it easier, because it is written in the first person (Harper)? She doesn't really have to do voices? No matter, she does a good job.

In this second book, Harper is hired by a college professor, Professor Nunley to read the dead people in the graves in an older cemetery on his college campus in Memphis. He wants to debunk her abilities using a log of the graves contents that were recently discovered. Not only is Harper correct for all of the graves she reads, but she finds a new body that has been buried on top of an older grave. She determines that it is a young girl, Tabitha who had gone missing 2 years earlier in Nashville. Harper and her step-brother, Tolliver are very familiar with Tabitha. They were hired by the family to try to find Tabitha, however Harper was unable to find her, until now. 

This is paranormal, because of Harper's abilities, but not scary, monster paranormal (vampires, werewolves, etc.). Nor is it psychic or at least Harper does not label herself as a psychic. She describes it like this - "Psychics—honest psychics—do receive a lot of information when they touch something a crime victim owned. The bad part is, quite often they receive information so vague it’s almost useless (“The body’s buried in the middle of an empty field”), unless you have a good idea what you’re looking for to begin with." She just finds dead bodies or as she stated once - “The closer I get, the more intense the buzz, the vibration, is. When I’m on top of them, I can reach down and tell how they died. I’m not a psychic. I’m not a precognate, or a telepath. I don’t see who killed them. I only see the death when I’m near the bones.”

So this mystery - who put Tabitha's body in a grave in Memphis? Was it Harper? Why? Was she set up if so, by whom? I can't really comment on the mystery, since I read it before and I don't know if I guessed it correctly because it was obvious or was it obvious because I vaguely remembered?

Harper and Tolliver have an interesting relationship. They are step-siblings but not blood related. Harper's mother married Tolliver's father. They met when they were young teens. Because their parents were drug addicts, they raised their younger sisters while in their teens. That is until the authorities discovered their living situations when Harper's sister, Cameron went missing walking home from High School. Cameron was never found by authorities or Harper. Their two youngest sisters, were taken by their Aunt and Uncle, Harper going into the Foster system, Tolliver was already 19 or 20. Harper and Tolliver are best friends, business partners and support system. But in this book, Harper realizes after all these years that Tolliver is more than just a BFF to her... though she never states it out loud - to herself or to him.

On to book 3, An Ice Cold Grave.

Michelle Lilholm Bennett

Andrea McGuffey

It was pretty good but there were a few inconsitancies between the first and second book. Plus the brother/sister relationship between Tolliver and Harper is getting a little weird. I know they're step siblings but it's still a little weird. The actually mystery story, itself, was good though.

Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries, No. 2)

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