I purchased the first three books in Charlaine Harris‘ Harper Connelly series (Grave Sight, Grave Surprise, and An Ice Cold Grave) at Savers. Then I borrowed the last one (Grave Secret) from the local library.
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. The way Harper sees it, she’s providing a service to the dead while bringing some closure to the living – but she’s used to most people treating her like a blood-sucking leech. Traveling with her step-brother Tolliver as manager and sometime-bodyguard, she’s become an expert at getting in, getting paid, and getting out fast. Because for the living it’s always urgent – even if the dead can wait forever.
Since I read the four books in this series back-to-back, I am going to write a single review of the series as a whole rather than of each individual book. I liked Harper a lot. I thought that she had moxie while also acknowledging that she had a disability that prevented her from doing some of the things she wanted to do. I also really liked Tolliver, though you get to know him less, since the POV is only Harper’s. Together, I found them an interesting pairing. Neither was perfect. Tolliver showed some jealousy at times and was a bit of a womanizer. Harper was frequently less forthcoming than she could have been. Plus, their shifting partnership required negotiation and nuance that I suspect some readers won’t gel with.
Having said that I liked the characters, which, over the four books I did, I also admit that Harris’ writing style kept a distance between the reader and the characters that I frequently felt. It left Harper, especially, feeling cold at times, and at other times left the story dragging a little. The mysteries themselves kept me intrigued, though. But each wrapped up quickly, giving Harper the solution rather than letting her discover it herself. All in all, I liked the series but didn’t love it.
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