Book Review: Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris

Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris
Berkley Publishing Group
306 Pages
Copyright 2009

Harper Connelly and Tolliver Lang are back. Harper is a young woman with an unique ability - she can located the bodies of the dead and tell how they died. It’s an ability she was left with after being struck by lightening.

The pair, once step brother and sister and now lovers, are back in Texas, hired by a wealthy young woman to determine how her grandfather died. The only problem is the fact that it turns out he was most likely murdered and his caretaker died in childbirth, not of a ruptured appendix as everyone believed.

From the Joyce ranch, the pair heads to Garland to visit their sisters who are being raised by Harper’s aunt. The four are the victims of a horrible childhood, raised by drug addicted parents unable to care for themselves much less their children. The return raises the specter of Cameron, Harper’s sister who vanished after school one day, her body never being found.

A tense time is made all the more tense when Tolliver is shot and then the police receive a death threat aimed at Harper. The following investigation leads the pair back to the very time in their lives that they want nothing more than to forget - their childhood and the loss of Cameron.

This is the fourth book in the series. I’ve enjoyed them all, but this one, in my opinion, is the weakest of the series. Too much clutter, too many characters that seemed to be more filler than character, and too much of the story relied on the past for my tastes. And, the ‘ick’ factor was out in full force every time Harper introduced Tolliver as her brother. Hopefully that will stop in the next book.

Recommendation: The mystery of the grandfather and his caretaker are almost lost in the past in spite of the connection between the events. But, I read it in two days and like Harper and Tolliver enough to suggest it as an enjoyable story, for the most part.