This mystery follows Leda Foley, travel agent and psychic, and Seattle PD Detective Grady Merritt who meet after she saves his life by re-booking his flight simply due to a psychic feeling she had. Grady is a little more open to the world of the supernatual than most police detectives and he asks for Leda's help on a case almost 2 years old that he just can't get a good lead on. Leda reluctantly agrees, afraid her spotty at best psychic abilities won't be much help solving Grady's murder case when she couldn't help solve her fiance's murder 3 years prior. However, the last 6 months of honing her skills during Klairvoyant Karaoke at her favorite bar has helped and soon Grady, Leda, and Leda's best friend Niki, are piecing together clues and just might be able to solve more than Grady's cold case.
I hoped to like this book but I did not expect to love it as much as I did. I've always love gritty police procedural TV shows, movies, and books. The grittier, the better. Give me a haggard, alcoholic detective with his marriage falling to pieces and trying to solve the one case that's always haunted him. And while I still love that type of mystery story, I've really grown to appreciate cozy mysteries. I always thought cozy mysteries meant that the mystery was pretty low-stakes - like "someone stole the trophy for the town apple pie contest and we need to find it before the competition is over" level of mystery. I've since learned that is not correct and while some cozy mysteries may be like that, the genre can still involve high-stakes crimes like murder. While Grave Reservations might not fit the exact definition of a cozy mystery (since Grady is an actual police detective), this reads and feels much more like a cozy mystery than a detective mystery. Grady is doing most of his work with Leda off the clock and since the cases are 2-3 years old, it doesn't have the urgency that a lot of detective mysteries do. This read was super fluffy, fun, and a bit quirky so if the description interests you, I highly recommend you pick it up!
The characters, for me, were really the cherry on top of a fantastic book. I absolutely loved everyone who showed up on the page and Priest does a great job of making all the characters interesting and their voices unique. Everyone was super love-able and I wish the book was longer just so I could stay in their friend group longer. The ending did leave the door open to a possible sequel or series and I really hope we do get more books in this world. Priest did a great job of pinpointing a specific detail for each character and then branching off from there. So, for example, we know from the first page that Lena has some sort of psychic ability but as the chapter progresses, we see how this gift, and the limitations of it, have impacted her life. The cast of side characters are super fun and they really feel like their own little family. Grady was very much the straight-man of the comedy troupe but he isn't overly stern or a buzz-kill by any means. I really appreciated how he felt very much like a detective the whole time and kept Leda and Niki grounded in the realities of police work when they got caught up in the amateur sleuthing aspects. My favorite line of his goes something like "I believe you, but we still need to convince more police officers, some lawyers, and a judge so we need actual evidence" (not a direct quote). I do wish we got more of Grady's life outside of the case with Leda - especially since we get some chapters from his POV. We know he has a 17 year old daughter and a detective partner, but we really don't get any scenes of him away from Leda. I really would have loved a scene where his partner catches on to what Grady's been doing in his off hours, for example. If we do get a sequel or series after this, I really do hope we get more from Grady's perspective.
I thought the choice to have alternating POV chapters between Leda and Grady was really smart as it let the reader see Leda's gift from different perspectives. As I mentioned above, I do wish we got more of Grady's personal life away from Leda but we got a good amount of Leda's personal life and internal struggles. I liked the choice to have both cases be relatively old so that there is some distance and the book isn't an over-emotional journey. Leda has done some healing since her fiance was killed, but she obviously isn't completely healed and we do see some of that journey in her chapters. Grady, similarly, has a lost in his past that he seems to still have a pretty strong emotional connection to but we don't see him exploring or revealing any of that to Leda (or the reader). There were some breadcrumbs that I picked up on that I really hope get fleshed out more if there's a sequel to this book. I really enjoyed the subtle shifts in narrative tone between Leda and Grady's chapters and while the general tone of the book is pretty fun and fluffy, I did find Grady's chapters to be just a tad more serious and subdued which makes sense because we're seeing everything through his critical police detective brain. I love a good dual-POV book where we can clearly see the differences in characters simply by the little narrative changes in their chapters.
I love the psychic abilities and the way they were worked into this world. Psychics working with the police has been done before, but I've found most of the time, a big part of the story revolves around the psychic (or medium, etc) proving to the police they are the real-deal. In this case, it was refreshing to have Grady come in already a believer of sorts which made him and Leda an instant team instead of them fighting each other for 75% of the book. I loved how caring and supportive everyone was when Leda was frustrated with figuring out exactly how her visions work. She gets frustrated with herself because she doesn't feel as useful as someone with psychic skills should be to an active police investigation. I think because of this choice to have Leda's skills still be developing, it makes sense that we don't get a whole lot of big psychic breakthroughs or super clear visions during the course of the story. Lena gets more flashes of certain moments or words that she can tell are important, but the connection isn't always clear. As a side note, Klairvoyant Karaoke might just be my favorite part of any book I've read this year.
And, of course, what kind of mystery book review would it be without talking about the mystery and investigation. I thought it was a really smart decision to have Grady and Leda investigating cold cases because it allowed them to skip right to the core aspects of the investigation since all the boring, normal questions were already asked during the initial investigating. So, for example, Leda would ask if X person had an alibi for the night of the murders and Grady could look through the notes and say "yes, they were at dinner with their wife" instead of us having to watch as they go and actually ask that character about their alibi. So having the cold cases already be partially investigated meant that the reader could get a little info-dump on the background of whatever character and then Grady and Leda could start asking the juicy questions about secrets and rumors that they uncovered. I really liked the way the different threads all came together in the end and how the investigation felt very grounded even though there were psychic visions involved. I think because Grady was so steadfast in making sure he still did his job to independently verify any hints or leads Leda could provide, it made the whole investigation still feel very solid.
As if it isn't already incredibly obvious, I loved this book. It was fun, fluffy, a little over the top and cutesy at times, but a really fun read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is December 1, 2021
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