Grave Expectations

Grave Expectations is a crime novel by the English writer Alice Bell, published in 2023. It is her first book, and its narrator is a burnt-out young medium who can see at least some of the ghosts she claims to see. The book is written from the point of view of a medium who is honest about being only almost authentic, and it is meant to be funny as well as puzzling.

Claire and Sophie have been friends since before Sophie went missing at seventeen, and Sophie has stayed with her since. The job they agree to take is at an old manor house in the English countryside, where the family have gathered for the eightieth birthday of its matriarch and want a seance performed.

What they get instead is a house full of people with things to hide and, in due course, a dead body. Claire sets out to work out which member of the family is responsible, with the help of a band of investigators who are as unusual as she is, and the book keeps the tone light even when the plot is not.