Grave Expectations: The hilarious and gripping BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick for 2023

Product Information

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. “ How exciting to find a modern murder mystery with a paranormal twist and interesting main characters! When Claire is hired to be the entertainment by an old ‘friend’ from University at a family gathering at their country pile, The Cloisters, she can’t afford to refuse. Things get complicated when Claire & Sophie realise someone has come to an untimely end at the house, and almost everyone seems to be hiding something. Fast,funny, and furious, this book hasbags of humour, bags of heart, and a proper murder mystery at its core. Alice Bell is one to watch!”

The book was selected with the help of a panel of library staff from across the UK. Our readers loved Grave Expectations – here are some of their comments: This is a mystery with a paranormal twist as several ghosts help out along the way. Claire & Sophie are still best friends even though one of them is dead & some of their conversations are like those conducted between slightly exasperated siblings. The mystery itself is rather thin, there's not a great deal of actual detecting even though Claire is a self-confessed crime show addict. There were one or two laugh out loud bits though - I particularly liked the misheard Spice Girls lyrics one. Yes, it lost its way a little in the middle but overall it was a nice little paranormal mystery with a humorous edge. 3.5 stars (rounded up) When the pair arrive at The Cloisters, they find themselves drawn to a tragic and unrecognisable ghost, clearly an unquiet spirit who met an untimely end. Teaming up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family - depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage reactionary Alex - Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when. Together they must race against incompetence to find the murderer before the murderer finds them, in this funny, modern, media-literate debut mystery for the My Favourite Murder generation." Claire and Sophie are best friends, inseparable you might say. Unfortunately that’s because Sophie is a ghost & she’s been haunting Claire since her murder at 17. Claire can now see & speak to a multitude of ghosts, and is trying to earn a living as a professional medium carrying out seances. This novel was an absolute gem, funny and clever with really engaging characters. I loved the dynamic between eternal teen Sophie and millennial Claire. The capable, unflappable Alex takes everything in their stride, their enthusiasm for the investigation sweeping Bash reluctantly along with them.Fast, funny and furious, this book has bags of humour, bags of heart and a proper murder mystery at its core' Janice Hallett Alice Bell grew up in South West England, in the sort of middle-of-nowhere where teenagers spend their weekends drinking Smirnoff Ice in a field that also has at least one horse in it. It’s a really great mystery novel, a good story and all ends are neatly tied off and it was really funny and I want more of Claire and Sophie and Basher and Alex and really I want to know what happened to make Sophie a ghost. As I stated in my last review of Beyond the Grave (#3), the things that hadn’t irritated me in the first 2 novels, were starting to wear me down and send up red flags by the third book in the series. And, I think once those issues became glaring, I haven’t been able to forget them or turn them off during my time reading Grave Expectations (#4). The inconsistencies in this series are becoming too much.

Teaming up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family - depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage radical Alex - Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when. That's perhaps the thing that will most determine whether you like Grave Expectations, actually: up with how much fairly specific cultural humour are you willing to put? If, like me, that specific cultural humour happens to be directed fairly solidly at Your Personal Brand of Existence, you'll probably get along very well with it. (Do you, for example, enjoy the visual metaphor of a dom National Theatre topping the boats in the Thames over which it looms?) If not, you'll have to sift through quite a lot of jokes you don't really like to get to the murder mystery parts that you presumably do like. If you don't like either of those things, I simply don't know what to tell you.You've never read a country house whodunit quite like Grave Expectations. Nor is there a generation gap quite as wide as the one between Claire and Sophie. Fast, funny and furious, this book has bags of humour, bags of heart and a proper murder mystery at its core. Alice Bell writes with real verve and crafts a preposterous premise into a sharp, well written and lively story that's at once out of this world and yet reassuringly real. As reader, you're along for the ride, and it's a runaway ghost train of a ride at that! Bell is one to watch. -- Janice Hallett Grave Expectations by Alice Bell is a really fun paranormal crime fiction debut that kept me interested in both the characters and what would happen. I will say that listening to the audiobook means you have to really concentrate otherwise it is easy to miss things/get confused, and I did find myself having to rewind quite a bit because I wasn't paying close enough attention. That being said, the audiobook was still really great to listen to, and I thought Sophie Roberts did an excellent job with the narration. The accent was a little difficult for me to understand at times, so I did end up listening to this at around 2.5-2.8x speed; 2x speed in the car. 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 author This book positively lit up my weekends with its cosy, affectionate, funny, awkward brand of ghostly crime-solving. Perfect for fans of BBC's Ghosts, Alice Bell has a keen eye for characterisation and the ridiculous, creating a story that will both send chills down your spine and wrap you up in a hug. -- Ally WIlkes, author of All the White Spaces