The dead don't lie (Grave Sight - Charlaine Harris)

Member Name: CPTDANIELS

Product:	Grave Sight - Charlaine Harris
Date:	04/04/09 (274 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written, interesting lead character

Disadvantages: Slow start, weak support characters

===Background:===

I have read several novels by Charlaine Harris in the past six months, all featuring Sookie Stackhouse. In these books she is a telepathic who gets involved in the supernatural world of vampires, fairies and shape shifters. These I really enjoyed but I was keen to see what else this author could do, so I picked up this novel.

===About this author:===

Charlaine Harris to my mind is quite an unusual lady. She was born in 1951 and lives in Arkansas with her husband, children, dogs and a duck. Among her interests are Weightlifting and Cinemaphile. Quite an unusual lady by all accounts. Her success as a writer is based around her Sookie Stackhouse vampire books. However she has also written others including this one which was a New York Times bestseller and the first of three featuring Harper Connolly which I am going to review today.

===About the book:===

Harper Connolly is an unusual 23-year-old lady to say the least. She was struck with a bolt of lightning several years ago, that surprisingly didn't kill her and gave her a special gift. This soon became her job, as it gave her a special sense that is able to detect a dead body. Now she travels America with her brother finding missing dead bodies, as you do!!

Families or solicitors pay her to find their missing members, as she gets a buzzing in her head that gets stronger the nearer she gets to the missing body. On this occasion she was asked to come to a sleepy town of Sarne, which only survives on the seasonal tourist trade and is quiet the rest of the year.

Harper quickly found the body of a young man Dell in the woods, who has been missing for six months and Teenie his pregnant girlfriend. This clearly sent shock waves round the close-knit community and before long Harper's brother Tollier is arrested on a trumped up charge in an attempt to keep them in this unusual town. Then Harper is threatened by some youths. But who is behind these murders? Harper must find out before she is the next victim.

===My thoughts on the book:===

My overall feeling about this novel was I enjoyed it. It was a good story once I got into it, and built well into an exciting thriller. I must admit I did not however enjoy it as much as her Sookie Stackhouse books, which I thought I could more relate to.

There is certainly something in this authors writing style I find very appealing, she is very clear when describing people, places or a scene. This helps you picture the situation as if you were there yourself. She is a master at developing a story with excellent use of suspense and mystery, putting doubt the whole time into the readers mind.

Initially I really struggled to get into the story. I found I couldn't relate to the characters and I wasn't really sure what Harper Connolly was trying to achieve. I found the explanation of how she got her special powers frankly unbelievable and this allowed her to find dead bodies? Come on that's weird!!

It was also the pace that I found slow. Nothing seemed to be happening and what was
I found hard to get my head round. I do struggle to be honest with American authors as I find it hard to relate to their culture, the attitude to life and of course the wide open spaces that they have. And despite the quality of the writing I struggled to find the story interesting and logical.

Luckily I managed to stick with it, as I feel defeated when I give up on a book. And it did get better, much better. I found I started to not only enjoy the story but I got into the main characters and started to empathise with the situation she found herself in. She was written in a way you could see little bits of yourself in her character.

In many ways in Harper Connolly a clone of Sookie Stackhouse. Both ladies are in their early twenties, have a difficult family background and have a lack of success with the opposite sex despite being attractive. However, the main similarity that makes them different from everyone else is they both have a special gift, Sookie reads minds and Harper finds dead bodies. It made me wonder what this author would be like writing about us normal folk!!

I found the story really took some unexpected and exciting turns. This made up for the struggle I had understanding who was a potential suspect and why. And importantly in a town where everyone seemed related in some way, who knew who and where did they fit in to other people lives. As I found it a bit tough remembering this and the author disappointingly failed to remind the reader of this.

I think the author had a clear plan about the road the book was going down and into this she cleverly embroidered some unexpected twists and turns. It was just a pity this seemed wasted on me and I got to the stage in believing anyone could have committed the murders and in the end the author just picked one at random.

That said the story did build up into an exciting conclusion. This was where everything was explained and revealed and I got the impression that anything could happen. That certainly added to the excitement not having a clue what was going to happen to them all, although frankly she could have told me anything and I would have believed it, such as my confusion with the characters.

As you can probably tell by this a lot of the action seemed to be concentrated in the last 20 or so pages. But I'm glad to say once the truth was found it did all make sense and I could understand why everything had happened the way it did. She did clarify things very well at the end.

For me the best part of the book was the lead character Harper Connolly. Even though I struggled to believe her gift. I found her to be likeable and someone I could relate to with all the issues of being a stranger in a strange town. She often appeared vulnerable especially when her brother was not around to support her. I did take to her and found her to have a well-defined, deep and interesting personality certainly worth following.


Of the other characters in the book I found them weak and lacking any diversity in character or personality. As a result they did not stick in my mind and I struggled to remember who was who and what their history was. Maybe the author was trying to make up for this with some unusual names such as Harper, Tollier and Mary Nell.

For me this was not a real page-turner, especially in the early stages of the book, when it was like the pages were glued together. It was only the relaxed and interesting writing style that got me through this phase plus I hate giving up on a book.

The length of the novel was a little short for me, I would have liked a longer more drawn out ending, this would have added to the excitement and suspense of the novel. I needed time to digest exactly what was happening and certainly an epilogue may have helped finish the book off much better.

===Conclusion:===

Overall I did enjoy this novel. It was certainly not brilliant but once I had got through the early chapters I found I could enjoy it so I got to understand more about the situation and the plot. The best bit for me was the personality of the lead character who was always somehow vulnerable while at the same time someone I could easily relate to and like. The story while interesting was a bit confusing and her support characters weak.

On balance I would not recommend this book as a good suspense thriller. There are better on the market and for me this is a poor example of this fascinating author's work. I will be sticking to the Sookie Stackhouse ones in future.


Pages: 263
Publisher: Orion Books
Year: 2005
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 978-0-575-07883-3
About the author: www.charlaineharris.com

Thanks for reading my review.

This review is published on both Ciao and Dooyoo under my user name.

@CPTDANIELS April 2009

Summary: Very average thriller