Review // Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly #2) - Charlaine Harris

Published - 26th September 2006

Format - Kindle
Goodreads Synopsis - Charlaine Harris is already a star and a New York Times bestseller with her vampire mysteries starring Sookie Stackhouse and her Lily Bard mysteries. This second installment to her new supernatural mystery series might just be her biggest hit yet. Grave Sight's Harper Connelly is back, and her ability to find the dead and see their last moments is in higher demand than ever... A college class gets more than it bargained for when Harper gives a demonstration of her uncanny talent. Instead of just finding one body in an old grave, she finds two: the original occupant and a recently deceased girl whom Harper had tried, and failed, to find two years previously. To dispel suspicions about her own innocence, Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver undertake their own hunt to find the killer--only to find yet another body in the same grave.

The second book in Harris' Harper Connelly series, Grave Surprise, was actually a...surprise. I read the first a few months ago and although it was a decent story, it didn't seem to be anything special. The only reason I picked this up again is because my mother randomly picked it off the Kindle for me to read whilst visiting recently but it turned out to be more than I expected.

Now that I knew the characters, as well as Harris lets us know them anyway, I dove straight into the story and wanted to know all of the W's when reading or writing a book. I did guess the outcome early on, but the adventure to get there really interested me. The intertwining details of different character stories was great (and i've become a fan of 'detective' stories lately!). I still have a lot of questions regarding Harper & her brother Tolliver and i'm almost certain I know where this series is heading but I actually want to find out now, rather than just being dimly curious.

One thing that I didn't like about this book is attitudes towards sex. At one point, Harper and Tolliver are heatedly discussing their sexlives and the differences between a man's and a woman's views on this. Harper states that Tolliver want sex whenever, wherever with no commitment or cares and then goes on to say, "Maybe these were typical male-versus-female attitudes about sex". I don't agree with this at all and i'm not entirely sure why it's there, or why it's even relevant. Overall I enjoyed Grave Surprise though and will continue reading the series.