Review: Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

About the Book:

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.

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/grave-reservations-by-cherie-priest

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56898241-grave-reservations

My Thoughts:

I love the premise. I love the title. I love the characters. I love the cover. Cherie Priest is a well-established author, but new to me. Grave Reservations is not your momma’s cozy mystery! The characters are young and quirky. The setting is fun and hip.

Leda Foley is a sometimes psychic who is struggling to make ends meet as a travel agent. When one of her intuitions saves the life of a local detective, Leda, gets a lot more practice honing her clairvoyant skills. Grady Merritt is a hunky, single-dad and detective who happens to be chasing cold cases. I loved these two characters, and together, they are quite fun. The secondary characters are hipsters and cool. They add to the vibe more than the storyline.

The storyline is truly fun and the pace is excellent. The tale does require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but some of those questionable plot points do add to the quirk and fun. For example, “Klairvoyant Karaoke” is hilarious, but so not realistic. There are some throwaway crass comments that were totally unnecessary, didn’t add to the story, and in fact, distracted me from the plot. Overall, Grave Reservations was a fun-enough read that I would continue reading the series.

About the Author: Cherie Priest is the author of two dozen books and novellas, most recently The Toll, The Family Plot, The Agony House, and the Philip K. Dick Award nominee Maplecroft; but she is perhaps best known for the steampunk pulp adventures of the Clockwork Century, beginning with Boneshaker. Her works have been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction, and have won the Locus Award (among others) – and over the years, they’ve been translated into nine languages in eleven countries. Cherie lives in Seattle, WA, with her husband and a menagerie of exceedingly photogenic pets.