Grave Sight

I just started reading novels in the supernatural or I suppose fantasy genre. This whole series and it's heroine Harper Connelly, her loyal step brother and resident psychics keep this book fun and interesting. I also learned a lot about survivors of lightning strikes. Sometimes trying something different is worth it. This series was worth it for me. I hope they make a TV show about these.

Grave Sight (2005) is the first fantasy novel in the Harper Connelly series. Harper was struck by lightning as a girl and after that she was able to sense the presence of bodies. When she is close enough to the body, she also relives the death experience. In this novel, Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, have come to Sarne -- a small town in the Ozarks -- to find a body. Dell Teague, a teenage boy, had been found dead six months ago, but his girlfriend Monteen Hopkins had not been missed until the next day and the body still hasn't been found. Dell's mother, Sybil Teague, hires Harper to find the missing girl. Harper finds Teeny's body and faints from the shock of reliving the youngster's murder. Then Harper and Tolliver have to stay in Sarne awaiting confirmation of identity by the state police lab before being paid. Harper finds out more about Teeny and Dell and even meets Helen Hopkins, Monteen's mother. Harper also meets a friendly policeman, Hollis Boxleitner, who had been married to Teeny's sister. Sally Boxleitner had died before Teeny and Harper soon finds out that she too had been murdered. Then another murder occurs and Harper is told to stay in town. In this story, the common people of Sarne are generally hospitable, but Sheriff Harvey Bransom is very hostile. His widowed sister Sybil and her lawyer Paul Edwards seem to be more antsy than usual. Other people associated with the principals are even more hostile than the sheriff. And then there are the state police investigators. Harper has a continuing problem with people who believe that her ability to find the dead is fraudulent or downright weird. Some even believe her to be an agent of the devil. She has been stoned as a witch and once she barely escaped from a mob. She suffers from a bad case of kill the messenger. Having this talent has made her life more difficult. Yet she also has the consolation of giving closure to the relatives of missing persons. Still, Harper is not always successful in finding the missing bodies, particularly when the victim has been taken far away from the scene of the crime. Her own sister is one such case. Harper and Tolliver are very close. Although they came from different families, her mother and his father were married when they were older children. Since these parents were alcoholics and drug users, their children were more neglected than parented. Harper and Tolliver raised their younger siblings with a little help from Mark, Tolliver's older brother. Having personal experience with such neglected and abused children, I find Harper's backstory to be fairly typical of such cases, even to the children trying to avoid the governmental authorities. Naturally, these two are very protective of -- and dependent upon -- each other. This story is an unusual variant on the murder mystery. As with the Southern Vampire series, the paranormal element introduces a wild card into the plot. Although Harper's rare talent is

I thoroughly enjoy the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and I was curious to see the difference between Ms. Harris' two heroines--I was not disappointed. Where Sookie is warm, friendly, and disguises most of her most painful neuroses with a tight smile, Harper Connelly has had a rough enough life to not feel obliged to smile unless she truly feels it. I enjoyed Harper's 'brittle' toughness, and truly felt for the incredible vulnerability she tries so hard to ignore in herself. Her talent is original, and nicely defined, and her emotional fragility is entirely believable. I also liked the easy banter between Harper and Tolliver--and I can see why neither of these characters will yield to the bond and attraction that is so obviously intense that in excludes a possibility of a normal relationship outside the two of them. I gave this novel five stars because I felt that as the first novel of the series, it was laying the (excellent!) foundation for what is going to be some awesome character development in the future--another reason to rank Ms. Harris in my top ten reasons to love reading modern femme centered sci-fi:-)

What a great new series from Charlaine Harris! I can barely wait until the next installment. Heroine Harper Connelly can find dead people. She's kind of an energy sensing cadaver dog of a medium: able to feel the vibrations of the dead and discern how they died. In some ways Harper is reminiscent of Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake: she uses her paranormal skills in both private enterprise, and as part of police forensic investigations. And,like Anita, most of the time the people doing the hiring don't really like to hear what Harper has to tell them. Harper is assisted and protected by her stepbrother Tolliver. The relationship between these two is complex, to say the least, and it will be wonderful to watch them develop in coming volumes. Harris writes skillfully yet playfully, and develops her characters in a strong, appealing fashion. All of the groundwork for a fantastic series is beautifully established here in Grave Sight. In this first installment, Harper and Tolliver travel to the Ozarks to find a missing teenaged girl, presumed dead. They find her body deep in a wood, and plunge even deeper into small town intrigue, deception, secrecy, and murder. With conservative bigotry welling up around them, can Harper and Tolliver get away with their lives? Well, of course they can: there are many more books ahead, and I suspect we shall all of us buy them up like hotcakes. This new character is a winner.

I've been a big fan of Harris' Southern Vampire series from the moment they came out. I enjoy her vivid characters and the way she really makes you care about what happens to them. Now she has a new series and I love it just as much. While Harper is a slightly weaker character than Sookie from the SV series, it's easy to see that she has an inner strength and she's going to grow in the coming books. I love the matter-of-fact way she treats her power, making a living from it instead of hiding it away in shame. Another point that has people talking about this series is the fact that Harper travels with her step-brother, Tolliver. There is beyond a doubt, a deep though unspoken attraction between them and some people have complained that it is 'creepy.' I have to point out that they are in no way related by blood and I find their relationship fascinating and not creepy a bit. Often in romance books, the author has to go through a lot of drama to manufacture a reason why the hero and heroine can't get together. While not a romance, Harris' new book has an undercurrent of romance running through it. I'll be very interested to see in the next installment if Harper will recognize and act on her attraction to Tolliver and if their relationship will be treated as 'taboo' by the other people in their lives. Harris is one of those authors that make me wish I could write like her. I devoured this book in a single sitting and I'm already wishing for the next one.

After being struck by lightening, Harper Connelly can locate dead people and know if they died of natural causes, committed suicide, or were murdered. Relatives of missing people hire Harper to find their missing loved ones. Harper knows how they died because she senses the last minutes of the individual's life. Right now she and her step-brother Tolliver are in the Ozark town of Sarne, hired to find Teenie, a missing teenage girl. Harper finds the burial place and knows that the girl was murdered. She also discovers that Teenie's boyfriend didn't kill her and in remorse committed suicide but was murdered as well. Hollis, one of the police officers working the homicides, is interested in Harper who tells him that his wife Sally, the sister of Teenie was murdered and not an accident victim. Someone wants Harper and Tollivar gone and that person will not hesitate to use violence if it results in getting rid of them permanently. Considering that the heroine can find a dead body and learn how they died, she is amazingly normal and treats her skill like any of her other five senses. She even make a living out of it, not to exploit people but to give closure and sometimes even helping her client figure out who killed them if it was a homicide. Fast pacing, excellent character development and a strong storyline make GRAVE SIGHT an excellent reading experience. This fabulous opening gambit affirms that every series Charlaine Harris creates is utterly fantastic. Harriet Klausner