Grave Expectations

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I might give the next one a go to see if the characters have developed,, but if it's more of the same I think I would conclude that it just isn't aimed at me.

When Claire is hired to be the entertainment by an old ‘friend’ from University at a family gathering at their country pile, The Cloisters, she can’t afford to refuse. Claire meets loads of dead people, and if I'm remembering right all of them just died because that's what people do.

This slowed the pace down a bit, but also added an extra dimension and helped me to be more invested in the outcome. Claire and Sophie, her deceased 17 year old best friend and spirit guide are tasked with investigating who is responsible for the death of the now traumatised ghost haunting the library; a ghost presumed murdered by a member of the family. In fact, Sophie rarely leaves Claire’s side, because she’s been haunting her ever since she was murdered at the age of seventeen. The only part she was good at was that she could genuinely see and talk to dead people, but as it turned out, that bit was the least important.

For Claire it was a definite challenge to not carry on conversations in front of people who were unaware of her gift. There are some extremely comic scenes which lift the narrative but not too many as to make the book silly. Claire and Sophie team up with self-assured teenager Alex and sceptical ex-police officer Bash to try and work out who has died and who killed them. Hilariously, she ends up faking for most of her clients anyway because the majority of the people they want to contact have already passed on, and Claire can only commune with ghosts. On arrival at The Cloisters it quickly becomes clear that this family is hiding more than just the good china, as Claire learns someone has recently met an untimely end at the house.Picked this up being a fan of Alice Bell from Rock, Paper, Shotgun so perhaps a little bias but really enjoyed everything about this story. That's actually quite a dark premise and we definitely touch into quite how screwed up Claire is, but it's well balanced with the enjoyable elements. There's also a huge amount of fun with her sidekicks, ex cop Basher (actually Sebastian, lol) and nonbinary sarcasm teen Alex, plus the ludicrous posh family who may have murdered someone.

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. It's clearly aimed at people young enough to find constant swearing highly entertaining (rather than deadly boring), who feel that all the cool people take drugs (rather than it being for losers) and who think that they/them should be taken seriously as pronouns for a single person (rather than realising the grammatical absurdity of it).It is all too easy to picture the action and alternately empathise with Clare and despair of her as she bumbles about trying to solve ‘the case’. Great assurance in the writing--hard to believe it's a debut--and marvellous characters make this a highly entertaining comic detective romp. Clever, unpredictable and a genuinely humorous modern day country house murder mystery which left me guessing. When she discovers a ghost that has some unfinished business at the party house, Claire decides to solve the murder.