Grave Sight is the first of the Harper Connelly mysteries by Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which has been made into the TV series, True Blood. Whereas the Sookie Stackhouse books feature a protagonist who can read people's minds, along with a host of other supernatural creatures, the Harper Connelly mysteries are a little more grounded in reality. Only the protagonist, Harper Connelly, has supernatural powers, which she gained from being struck by lightning when she was a teenager.
Harper can sense the dead, which enables her to find dead bodies and figure out how the person died. She and her stepbrother, Tolliver, travel around helping people figure out what happened to their loved ones and in what manner they died. At times, their work leads them into solving mysteries while, at other times, they just help bring closure to the living.
In this book, they are taken to Sarne, Arkansas to figure out whether a crime that just occurred was, in fact, a murder/suicide, as the police seem to think. Harper finds the girl's body right away and can tell she died a violent death, but, it turns out, the same is true of her boyfriend, who was also murdered. So this is not a murder/suicide and the killer is out there; it will take all of Harper's ingenuity to bring him to justice.
Harper is an engaging protagonist with a vulnerable side, rather like Sookie Stackhouse. Both are plagued with feelings of being a "freak" in a normal world, because of their superpowers. Fortunately for Harper, her stepbrother is there to help her out and manage the business side of things while she focuses on honing her powers. Whereas the Sookie Stackhouse novels are adventure stories, the Harper Connelly series is rooted in mystery and will keep you guessing until the end.
Charlaine Harris was born in Tunica Mississippi and was always interested in writing, even when she was young. At first, she wrote poetry and ghost stories, but when she was in school at Rhodes College, she also started writing plays. A few years later, she turned to novel-writing and has been doing so ever since; her career spans thirty years. She has written the Aurora Teagarden series featuring a librarian who solves mysteries; the Lily Bard series, also a mystery-themed series featuring a protagonist who was abused; the Sookie Stackhouse series; and the Harper Connelly books, which are currently being made into a TV series. Harris lives in southern Arkansas with her husband and three children.
"I really liked the premise of the book. Girl hit by lightening and now can detect dead bodies as well as see there.last moments of death/cause of death. That said I really liked Harper too but the book had a very depressing feel and I figured out 'who done it's pretty early on. It is more of a 3.5 but u Washington interested enough in the series to want to read more of Harper and her brother's adventures."
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Denise (4 out of 5 stars)