Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris

I check in on Charlaine's website weekly; she splits her weekly entry into half book reviews, half journal entry. She's had the first chapter of this book up on her site for a month or two and when I read it, I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. We all know her last Sookie book was pretty serious and I was shocked how many people criticized her for it. IMHO, she can't write a bad book but I just wasn't jazzed up for this one. Harper's life isn't that exciting and her relationship with her stepbrother/best friend/lover Tolliver has, as Harper said in this book, an "ick factor." In many ways, each book is quite similar - Harper and Tolliver travel all over the U.S., hired by people who are generally skeptical at best in Harper's talent of finding the dead. Someone decides that they are worth taking a shot at and then they solve the mystery and go along their merry way. There's also quite a bit of angst, definitely understandable, about their childhood, their neglectful parents who went to prison, their little sisters being raised by an aunt and uncle who don't like Harper and Tolliver, but most of all is Harper's missing sister, Cameron. Well I have news for you-all, Grave Secret ain't boring.

I won't rehash the whole plot of this book since you get the gist on the dust jacket but I will say that several of the dangling plotlines that have around since the first book are resolved. Family stuff in particular is focused upon and I was so relieved about that. It was about time too; backstories tend to be cleared up around this time in a series. We get to meet Tolliver's father and the way he was wrapped in the mystery in this book was interesting, if not exactly surprising. Harper and Tolliver end the book with a (mostly) happy ending and I expect that the next book can be started with a (somewhat) fresh start.