| Grave Secret Posted: If this book isn't the end of the Harper Connelly series, it certainly feels like it.
"Grave Secret" is a pretty solid conclusion to Charlaine Harris' short but sweet series about a woman able to sense the dearly departed. Mysteries are solved, plot threads are wrapped up, relatives are dealt with, and dirty little secrets are unveiled -- and while one pivotal secret is rather far-fetched, it handles all the loose threads deftly while keeping the door open for more possible stories about Harper and Tolliver.
After doing a job for the wealthy Joyce family, Harper and Tolliver face their toughest challenge yet: telling super-rigid Aunt Iona, Uncle Hank and their younger half-sisters that they're a couple. It doesn't help that this town is also where they lived as the abused blended family of neglectful junkies, and where Harper's beloved sister Cameron mysteriously vanished. As if their family relations weren't strained enough, Tolliver's creepy dad Matthew appears in town, claiming he wants to mend fences.
At the same time, Harper has been hired by the Joyces to find a missing baby that may be their grandfather's secret love child -- but someone is determined to keep her from finding it. People around her are getting injured, kidnapped and murdered -- even Tolliver has been shot. And as Harper tries to unravel the mysteries from years ago, she realizes that the Joyce family has a long-ago link to her own...
It's fairly obvious in "Grave Secret" that Charlaine Harris is ending the Harper Connelly series, although she leaves the door open for future adventures (if and when she ever wants to continue). She wraps up overhanging mysteries (Cameron's murder), deals with the rifts within the Lang/Connelly family, and puts the finishing polish on Harper and Tolliver's romantic subplot. It's a satisfying finale, if a somewhat bittersweet one.
And as in the previous books, Harris' down-to-earth prose remains warm and slightly humorous, but there's a darker, gruesome edge -- long-ago deaths, gory killings (some of them Harper's friends), and the overhanging, spooky presence of the dead. The biggest flaw is that a few of the plot twists is a bit on the far-fetched side (seriously, NOBODY noticed that except one lone person?), but otherwise it's a clever tangle of interconnected clues and lies.
Harper and Tolliver are already lovers, but Harris goes out of her way to smooth out whatever wrinkles are still left between them -- including the grossed-out reaction that almost everybody has when they hear that the stepsiblings are dating. Well, it is a little weird. They also get some nice emotional closure relating to their scummy parents and more "normal" siblings (both living and dead), and Harris reveals a lot more about their hellish childhood.
And Harris does a good job sketching out seemingly cliched characters like Aunt Iona and Uncle Hank, who initially act like sour hyper-religious party-poopers, but who eventually are shown to have good hearts. The flipside is the creepy Matthew, who spouts a lot of "rehab therapy" jargon but still obviously has a lot of hatred.
"Grave Secret" is a solid ending to Charlaine Harris's supernatural mystery series, and it ties together the various plot threads pretty neatly. Enjoyable if a bit far-fetched at times. |
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