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. Furthermore, the pop-culture references and dialogues seemed to be targeted at an audience that is younger than 40 years of age. I'm not saying people over 40 might not enjoy the book, but the dialogues might grate a bit.

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 authorI enjoyed almost all of this except the ending which I really wasn't all that surprised about. To me it felt like just another version of the big "misunderstanding" that's always present in any novel featuring any type of romance. Almost-authentic medium Claire and her best friend, Sophie, agree to take on a seemingly simple job at a crumbling old manor in the English countryside: performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. The pair have been friends since before Sophie went missing when they were seventeen. Everyone else is convinced Sophie simply ran away, but Claire knows the truth. Claire knows Sophie was murdered because Sophie has been haunting her ever since.

The charcaters are very cool and interesting. The cast of characters have great personality and when you read this series. You get so devoted to the characters and what they do in this book. This book encaptures you and you feel drawn to these characters. A clever and playful contemporary cosy mystery by Cobh-based debut author, the talented Alice Bell. Think Ghosts meets Knives Out." - Catherine Kirwan Redmond's development of 1835 London is rich in setting. The odors, along seedy streets or by the river's edge filled with sewage, are ripe in the telling. The sounds of horse hooves and bustling street markets are distinctly audible. The hand of fine silk or cotton batiste is richly textural and sumptuous to the touch. Kate's fresh and treasured strawberry jam is tasty down to its last bit. The fog of a smoky room is stifling and diminishes visibility. The reader richly experiences the mise en scène with all their senses. I'm not much of a murder mystery reader, but this is in some ways not much of a murder mystery. I don't mean that as a diminutive or a criticism, the 'he's not much of a player, is he?' that my dad would perhaps offhandedly say about whichever snooker person he wasn't keen on at the time, but in the sense that of the time I spent with Grave Expectations, relatively little of it was focused on the actual murder mystery. That's there, and it's competently done (as far as I can tell, having little to compare it to), but straight-up character work is what occupies most of the book. Well, that and what I suspect is a very specific type of humour particular to British people between the ages of, say, twenty-five and thirty-seven, but since I fall neatly into that band all I can really say about that is that it works for me. One for all: "One for all and all for one" is most closely associated with the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers which was released in 1844. This story takes place in 1835, yet Breese still uses this phrase. And yes, I know there is a possibility that the phrase was known before Dumas immortalized it, but since it is so closely associated with the musketeers it felt really wrong and out of place in a story that takes place 9 years before it publication.

Grave Expectations

Mash together Knives Out and Midsomer Murders, add in some supernatural elements and some referential millennial humour and you've got Grave Expectations. Claire is a slightly crap medium—not because she's not actually psychic but because she's bad at making a living from it—who's invited to do a gig at the big crumbling country pile of a fairly frightful family of English toffs. Soon there's a death, and Claire finds herself determined to figure out what happened at the Cloisters, in the company of her dead best friend Sophie and toff family members Basher and Alex. A nineteenth century romance, an impoverished writer and a dastardly murder to solve. This book was a solid read, with some great mystery to it. Special thanks to Kensington Books and Heather Redmond for giving me an advanced review copy of this book Grave Expectations” is the fourth book in “The Ministry of Curiosities” series. Again, I would like to give fair warning that this series has some dark content and I would recommend it for mature audiences, preferably whom are not too squeamish. The story continues from the previous book “Beyond The Grave. “ Fast, funny and furious, this book has bags of humour, bags of heart and a proper murder mystery at its core' Janice Hallett