GRAVE EXPECTATIONS

How do you solve a murder when you don’t know who the victim is?

Claire Hendricks has a leg up on your run-of-the-mill sleuth: Her BFF Sophie is a sassy teenage ghost who helps Claire communicate with the dead. The live woman and the ghost—who died in the 1990s under mysterious circumstances—travel around England performing séances, and now they're heading to Wilbourne Major, where they've been hired by Figgy Wellington-Forge to entertain at her grandmother's birthday party. Three generations of Wellington-Forges gather at the family estate, where, unfortunately, Nana dies the night before her party. This simultaneously casts a pall over the festivities and leads Claire on a quest: Nana, in her first moments on the other side, sees a sad-looking ghost wandering through the library and begs Claire to figure out who it is and how they died. With the help of Figgy's brother Basher and nonbinary nibling, Alex, Claire is able to pin down Nana's birthday party the year before as the site of the murder and one of the guests as the victim. Claire, who usually has little company other than Sophie and the rest of the dead, revels in her newfound friendships with Basher and Alex even as she turns a skeptical eye to the rest of their family. The next few days see Claire following a series of clues (with help from local ghosts) to try to figure out if a Wellington-Forge is in fact a murderer and which unlucky party guest died. But Claire has a secret in her past, and her excitement is clouded by anxiety: Will she be abandoned when the truth is revealed? There are certainly a few missteps in this mystery. The sprawling family, for example, could have stood to be a little less sprawling (maybe Bell could have cut out a generation?) as the many posh-named characters are hard to keep track of. And while Bell occasionally mistakes cheap one-liners for wit, there is just enough humor and heart to keep readers amused.

A goofy supernatural whodunit.