What an interesting story! Harper Connelly, after being hit by lightning as a teenager, has the ability, when in the physical presence of a dead body, to communicate with it and see the cause of death. Usually she can also sense the name. She can "feel" the presence of bodies and is called in when they know generally where a body might be. She can usually find it. She can walk through a graveyard, pause at each grave, and recite the cause of death and the name of the person there interred. Amazing stuff.

What makes the book so interesting to me is that as we go along with the character, the ability is not amazing or fantastic or anything like that--it's just a workaday, normal reality for her. She goes from job to job--people hire her to either find bodies or determine causes of death--just doing what she knows how to do. It takes a talented author to sell such a thing, to make it believable and normal, which Charlaine Harris certainly does.

Of course, there are complications in some cases, and this book is about one such. Things don't add up as she finds bodies and causes of death, which are not what the local authorities and the people who hired her expected.

I can't wait for the next book in the series. I like Harris' Sookie Stackhouse vampire series, too, but this isn't just frivolous frippery like those books. There is meat here.

Added later: My wife just finished the book; she, too, gives it a very positive review: "Loved it!"

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Book #1 of a new series featuring Harper, a 20-something woman who can find people who have died and mentally relive the last few moments of their life through their eyes.

Harper and her step-brother/traveling companion both have a no-nonsense approach to her abilities and what is necessary to make her skills minimally socially acceptable. They also exhibit a dry wit and talent for understatement that makes for entertaining reading.

A good mystery with dry humor and likeable characters. I think that I will like this series even better than the Sookie Stackhouse books.

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With elements of a cozy but, darker and with a paranormal twist this is a fast paced read. Harper Connelly has the ability to find the dead and see what caused their death after being struck by lightning as a teen. She is called to Arkansas to find a missing teen and opens a snake pit of buried secrets.

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What an interesting story! Harper Connelly, after being hit by lightning as a teenager, has the ability, when in the physical presence of a dead body, to communicate with it and see the cause of death. Usually she can also sense the name. She can "feel" the presence of bodies and is called in when they know generally where a body might be. She can usually find it. She can walk through a graveyard, pause at each grave, and recite the cause of death and the name of the person there interred. Amazing stuff.

What makes the book so interesting to me is that as we go along with the character, the ability is not amazing or fantastic or anything like that--it's just a workaday, normal reality for her. She goes from job to job--people hire her to either find bodies or determine causes of death--just doing what she knows how to do. It takes a talented author to sell such a thing, to make it believable and normal, which Charlaine Harris certainly does.

Of course, there are complications in some cases, and this book is about one such. Things don't add up as she finds bodies and causes of death, which are not what the local authorities and the people who hired expected.

I can't wait for the next book in the series. I like Harris' Sookie Stackhouse vampire series, too, but this isn't just frivolous frippery like those books. There is meat here.

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I was enticed to read Grave Sight because I adore author Charlaine Harris' better-known Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series, and hoped the fun might extend into Harris' new heroine, Harper Connelly. I don't seek out mysteries as a general rule, but I like Harris' characters and flip dialogue so much, I thought I'd give it a try.

I wasn't disappointed, but I didn't love it as much as her other series. Harper Connelly is a unique kind of private investigator -- after being struck by lightning as a teenager, she can now sense the location of dead bodies and see their last moments on earth. Her first adventure takes place in a small Ozark town where a young girl has been murdered, and the strange tale of her demise. Of course, since its a mystery, lots of twists and turns abound.

It's fun stuff, but I didn't leave the book with the "gotta get my hands on the next installment" feeling that I felt when Sookie's story was over. I will be seeking out Grave Suprise (book 2) but I don't have to make a special trip to Borders today to track it down in a frenzy.

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I cannot put down Ms Harris' books once I start them, just want to eat them up as fast as possible. This is another fun, fresh mystery about a young woman who can find dead bodies and sense their cause of death ever since she was struck by lightning at age 15. Sounds a little hokey, but in Ms Harris' hands, it's not. If you liked the Sookie Stackhouse series you'll probably like this somewhat darker book.

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I was waiting on my next Sookie Stackhouse book when I decided to read the Harper Connelly series. I found this book delightful. The characters and plot are creative and the plot kept me wanting to read more and more.

I am looking forward to the rest of the series. Anyone who enjoys the hint of supernatural should definitely read these.

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A good read, but I didn't LOVE Harper the way I do Harris' other heroines (Sookie and Lily Bard). Harper is fragile without the toughness of Lily or the social connections of Sookie. Fascinating premise, but the "big clue" in the story was pretty obvious to me. Worth a read, but not a keeper for me.

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Harper Connelly finds dead people. After being struck by lightning at the age of fifteen, Harper can sense when she is near a dead body, and she can see their last moments. Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, travel the country offering their services to find lost loved ones. Their current case takes them to the Ozarks. Teenie Hopkins has been missing for six months. Her boyfriend, Dell Teague, was found dead from a gunshot wound at the time she disappeared. The police believe that Dell may have killed Teenier and disposed of her body before killing himself. Dell's mother, Sybil Teague, wants her son's name cleared, so she is asking for Harper's help.

This is the first book in Charlaine Harris' Harper Connelly series. Several people told me that I would like this series. They were right. I found the story very entertaining. I liked the mystery which had several suspects. I did guess the killer and motive in the middle of the book, but that did not detract from my enjoyment. My rating: 4 Stars.

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Excellent series. I recommend it.

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This book, and its author, were a complete surprise to me. Friends suggest I must have been living in a Greenland research station to have missed Charlaine Harris' wildly popular books but the truth is that I've been doing a 'Jane Austen retrospective'in recent years. It was a short sprint, I suppose, from dead authors to an "I see dead people" novel, but it wasn't that aspect of Grave Sight (however clever) that delighted me. As a native Southerner, nothing riles me faster'n than authors who write about Southern people, landscapes, and customs without really knowing much about them. Grave Sight, however, has the stamp of authenticity about it. The characters, the dialogue, the settings, the quirks and lifeways and encounters that make up the books: well, of course, they're fictional, since no one I ever heard of told the local sheriff where to find a dumped body because they could sense the grave and the last few seconds of the victim's life. But they nevertheless feel credible to such an extent that after the first few pages you stop thinking Grave Sight is fiction and start taking in the narrative like a story you're hearing from a friend.

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