Grave Expectations

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I loved Claire, she is just trying to make the best of her gift, there has been an incident in the past where she has used her gifts and it ended badly for her, so Claire is a little battered and bruised metaphorically but still plodding on.. I really want good things to happen to Claire.

Funny, fast, sharp, original, and addictive ... a unique breath of fresh air. Brilliant! -- Andrea Mara That's perhaps the thing that will most determine whether you like Grave Expectations, actually: up with how much fairly specific cultural humour are you willing to put? If, like me, that specific cultural humour happens to be directed fairly solidly at Your Personal Brand of Existence, you'll probably get along very well with it. (Do you, for example, enjoy the visual metaphor of a dom National Theatre topping the boats in the Thames over which it looms?) If not, you'll have to sift through quite a lot of jokes you don't really like to get to the murder mystery parts that you presumably do like. If you don't like either of those things, I simply don't know what to tell you. This book hasbags of humor, bags of heart, and a proper murder mystery at its core.”—Janice Hallett, author of The Appeal I would like to start off by thanking NetGalley and Kensington Books for sending me an advanced copy of this book to review.A really unique concept paired with whip-smart writing and lots of heart -- Heather Darwent, author of The Things We Do to Our Friends Funny, fast, sharp, original, and addictive... a unique breath of fresh air. Brilliant!' - Andrea Mara

The whole story is really, really good fun and it is a solid murder mystery, but the characters are what makes this a really special read.

Advance Praise

This really reminded me of the Glass Onion series of films, which I watched recently and loved. A central character, Claire, full of fun and wit, embroiled in a classic ‘whodunnit’ with a small mix of suspects tied together by familial bonds and secrecy. The premise of Claire being a medium and talking to ghosts sounds completely ridiculous, but turned out to be really fun. The ghosts she communicates with are sassy, sarcastic and funny, with their own quirky personalities and behaviours. Particularly the ghost of 17-year-old Sophie, Claire’s childhood friend, who follows Claire around like a shadow providing witty commentary as she goes. It was very enjoyable.” About the author I think when approaching books such as Grave Expectation we need to take it with a grain of salt. It’s not intended to be a biography and shouldn’t be read as such. So long as I just pretended this character was entirely new, it was fine.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. First things first, the concept of a medium and a ghost solving a murder really works for me. And it was executed perfectly.Claire has been booked by the Wellington-Forge family to act as a medium at their nana's birthday celebrations. However things do not go anywhere near to plan and Claire finds herself being pressganged into discovering what happened at last year's celebrations and why there is an unquiet spirit in the library. Who exactly is the spirit? Why are they hanging around the house and, far more importantly, which one of the Wellington-Forge's committed the murder? Thankfully Claire has Sophie to help otherwise, as Sophie quite rightly puts it, nothing would get detected because Claire is rubbish at it. This is one of those books that I wish we had a ten number scale instead of 5 stars because it's a true 7 to me. 3 seems too low and 4 too high. The next book to be featured on the Zoe Ball Radio 2 Book Club will be Grave Expectations, an exciting debut novel by Alice Bell. The book was released on 4 May and Alice will be on the show with Zoe on Thursday 29 June. There was one moment in the storytelling which caused this reader to bristle a touch and that was the statement by one character of, "One for all and all for one" with a reference to the Musketeers. Dumas has yet to write the Three Musketeers which is not completed for another nine years. But beyond that, the book is well written and the setting of 1835 London well created.