Title: Grave Reservations
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Atria Books
Release Date: October 26, 2021
Pages: 300
Book Source: Netgalley
“Meet Leda Foley: devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. When Leda, sole proprietor of Foley’s Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, her life changes in ways she couldn’t have predicted.
After watching his original plane blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack.
Despite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees for a secret reason: her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Leda’s psychic abilities couldn’t help the case several years before, but she’s been honing her skills and drawing a crowd at her favorite bar’s open-mic nights, where she performs Klairvoyant Karaoke—singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people’s personal effects. Now joined by a rag-tag group of bar patrons and pals alike, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer—and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.” – Amazon
Kim’s Review
I was first introduced to Cherie Priest when I read her Borden Dispatches series, which combines Lizzie Borden, Cthulhu, and a secret cult… trust me, it works. So when I read the synopsis for Grave Reservations I was interested to see how she would tackle a psychic partnering up with a cop, since it’s been done before… and I have to say she did a fantastic job and put her own unique spin on it!
There were lots of fun and quirky characters combined with cheeky banter between Leda and her bestie, Niki, and the detective Grady. At this point there could be a love interest between Leda and Grady, but I really appreciated how Priest kept it really low key, especially since Leda is still mourning her fiance and trying to find his killer. While I feel Priest did a great job developing the characters and with the dialogue, I do think the mystery could have been tightened up a bit.
It was very interesting to see how Priest combined all of Leda’s psychic flashes and turned them into clues, and for me that was the best part of the mystery. But I don’t feel like this is a mystery that can be solved by the readers because of how the clues/visions played out. If you don’t mind reading a mystery that can’t be solved by the reader, then you may enjoy Grave Reservations more than I did in this area.
All in all, a very fun, fast read and I’m excited to see if Grave Reservations turns into a book series or even a Netflix series…. Here’s hoping!
**
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