This was such a fun read - what else could a story about a necromancer, zombies & vampires be! I thought the characters were interesting, there were a few twists & turns, there was a good amount of romance & ir was funny. It sounds like it would be a hot mess but it's not!

A funny read with plenty of interesting characters. This is a light hearted easy read.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Agatha Raisin meets Sookie Stackhouse is the perfect description for this book. A light hearted take on zombie raising and vampire lovers, which was great to curl up with and get lost in for a little while. Toni was relatable - if a little fickle sometimes, very easily distracted by her vampire boyfriend looking hot when she was annoyed with him - and I enjoyed the humour that was injected into what could have been a fairly serious read. Enjoyable, and I would read more of the series in the future.

Toni Windsor has an unusual gift, she can raise people from the dead. Not something there would be much call for in Staffordshire you’d think. You’d be wrong. Add in a handsome vampire, an upcoming turf war and you’ve got a cracking story line with a nice sense of humour running through it. As a necromancer, Toni shouldn’t get on with Vampires, as they’re dead, but in a different way to the people that she brings back from the dead. However, she does, and it works.

Great story line, well written, reminiscent of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, but none the worse for that. I read this much too quickly but couldn’t put it down once a started it. I enjoyed the other characters, and their story lines, including the oldest person that Toni had brought back, who becomes her friend. I look forward to the next instalment.

Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

What a fun read!

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to think when I began reading Grave Secrets. You see, I’m not really into stories with a lot of gratuitous sex. Many authors overdo it and end up detracting from the story they’re trying to tell. But James’s sex scenes are well-written and, well, just plain sexy. I loved many of the characters, like Bredon, the gentlemanly zombie, and Peter, the boyfriend of the boyfriend. However, I have to say - and Alice, I hope you’re listening - I am really not all that crazy about Oscar, the protagonist’s love interest. Noooo. Toni should be with dark, smoldering Benedict, the head honcho of the vampires. Now there would be the basis for some hot love scenes. They have a crackling chemistry and are both snarky as hell. Perfect basis for a good vampire / necromancer relationship. But, alas, Toni thinks she loves Oscar. Oh well.

If you love vampires, this is for you. If you love sex scenes, murder mysteries, and supernatural creatures, this is still for you. James’s take on the vampire culture and lifestyle is new and fresh. Various lifestyles and ethnicities are included, which is also a big plus for me.

All-in-all, I really loved this book and I’m looking forward to the next in this series.

Unfortunately, after about 3-4 chapters, I had to put this on the DNF list. I was really hopeful after reading the description and other early reviews that I would enjoy this book as it had elements (mystery/PI/paranormal) that I love in a good story. The heroine sounded goofy and quirky which as well. I was truly hoping for a light, snark-filled, paranormal mystery. However, I could not connect with the heroine at all nor could I really get into the plot. As an avid PNR/UF reader, I'm accustomed to "first in a new series" info dump/world building which causes action to be a bit lagging for taste, though it is necessary to trudge through in order to really set up the series moving forward. But there felt a very distinct lack of any action and not enough in these first chapters to really grab the reader. It just wasn't for me.

Through NetGalley, I received a free copy of GRAVE SECRETS (Book 1 of the Lavington Windsor Mysteries) by Alice James in exchange for an honest review. Lavington “Toni” Windsor has an addiction; she feels compelled to practice necromancy even when it isn’t needed to help her law enforcement brother solve murders. Each morning after an evening of chatting with corpses, Toni returns to her work as an estate agent, where she can often be found napping at her desk. One day, her boss wakes her up to assign her a new client. When she meets with that client, she finds out he’s a newly-arrived vampire in need of a residence with a spacious basement. Because eligible men are scarce in the area, Toni is desperate to welcome the vampire’s romantic advances. However, romantic entanglement with vampires comes with lots of unpleasant realities, so Toni will have to decide whether her desperation is severe enough to sustain her new relationship when, among other repugnant things, it includes frequent unpleasant interactions with undead bullies.

This book wasn’t quite what I expected. I hoped the book would be silly; as it turns out, it was just the main character. This novel contains sex with a single partner, but it also contains detailed oversharing about the sex Toni had with her prior partners. Also, there are hints that, in the future, this series could turn into polyamorous debacle. When confronted with expectations that, as a vampire’s lover, she would be expected to have sex with others in the coterie, Toni protests that she’s “not that kind of girl,” but she actually seems more horrified by the thought of donating blood than of becoming a group sex toy.

#GraveSecrets #NetGalley

Well colour me surprised I was going in thinking this was going to be a fun, light urban paranormal. Yes, Grave Secrets was fun and hilarious, but it was also swoon worthy and bloody. I thoroughly enjoyed our heroine Toni and her train wreck of a life. I did enjoy the murder mystery aspect I just there was more of it in the story hopefully we get a more in-depth mystery in the sequel. Overall Grave Secrets is a fun and quirky paranormal romance with a dash of mystery to keep everyone on their toes.

Alice James' Grave Secrets is, for lack of a better word, a charming vampire zombie novel. Her protagonist is at times both ferocious and endearing, charming and blunt. James writes action and combat well, with just enough violence to remind the reader of the stakes (pun semi-intended) of dealing with the undead. She blends in just enough sex and romance to keep the story moving without encumbering the plot with needless erotica. The supporting cast are fascinating; their motivations and backstories lend to unique voices and desires. I find myself excited for the next adventure of Toni, and can't wait to see what trouble she lands in next.

Can I just say that this book was such fun!
It really was a welcome relief from other books I had been reading and zipped along through the pages with ease, the writing style, for me, made this happen easily and I seemed to be turning page after page and eating up each chapter with interest, watching to see the charecters flesh out, or not as the case my be !
I gues I have to mention that there are alot of Zombies and Vampires in this book, hence the previous joke about flesh.

I have seen a tag line for this book 'Agatha Raisin meets Sookie Stackhouse, with croquet and zombies.' and i have to agree, I read all the Sookie Stackhouse books and Agatha Raisin ones, so I feel confident that I can judge that sentence.
Toni Windor is our protagonist , who, by day, is an Estate Agent, but by night lives a completely different and eerie night life, she is a Necromancer, she leads us through the story with a first person commentary, Toni is a loveable charecter, I love the fact that she is a redhead, we are so unrepresented and enjoyed getting to know her.
This book is not what i call a classic horror book, it is not spooky, in the 'oh shit, iam going to sleep with my light on' type of book, it is hilarious at times, but please know that we do get our fair share of blood and guts and of course the hot vampire men, one of which our lovely redhead falls for, this is when the story really gets going and oh boy does she get herself into trouble.

If you have not read this, you will not know, of whom i am referring to, but BREDON! he is such a gentleman :)

I am really not sure, how to classify this book, i fear that calling it a 'horror' may have mislabelled it, romance, chicklitty urban fantasy type i guess?
I think this book could actually slip into quite a few catagories, or should i say cataGORIES! * walks away giggling*

Thank you Netgalley and Rebellion Publishing for letting me read this for an unbiased review.
I shall for sure, be reading the next book :)
Review will appear on the blog and my social media' s nearer the publication date)

I would say this is a 3.5 stars.

I did enjoy reading this book and loved some of the characters. I thought it was an interesting take on zombies, vampires and ‘mortals’ and their relationships.

I thought it was well written and some of the blimps would be ironed out on final version.

I cared enough about the characters that I wanted to read on and see what would happened.
I loved the setting and was great to have a familiar areas, mentions of places and you could visualise places really clearly.

Definitely a book I would recommend if your a fan of zombies and vampires and wanting to find a different take.

Grave Secrets is ultimately a paranormal romance, but it also gives fabulous cozy mystery vibes & the atmosphere is painted with the humour and campiness of a small English village. The extremely clever dialogue and ridiculous foibles made me laugh out loud every other page. Hijinks abound, an unsolved murder pull you in, and there’s even some very steamy romance in this very funny book. Problematic issues of fuzzy consent as in many dark romances will ward off some readers. Unlike other cozy mysteries there is a surprising bit of violence, a real gore-fest. These horrors are simply one thread of the story and are written with a casual air but not quite glib. It added to the humour in my opinion. “Oh just another day at the office...” 🧟‍♂️

It’s a fun read releasing just in time for Halloween 2020. I’ll be anticipating the next book in the series especially if the series focuses on blending cozy mystery with humour-horror (hopefully at the expense of the misogynistic dark romance elements).

I thought the summary sounded like a fun, cute little novel!! But, unfortunately, this book wasn’t for me. I could care less about the characters. Sigh!!!!

I do believe a lot of people will love this book though!! So, make sure to check it out yourself! It has sim ore and gynornous

**I would like to thank Nertgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

I received an ARC copy of this book via netgalley.
Toni Lavington is an estate agent with an interesting siedline in Necromancy, a skill she appears to have inherited from her grandfather. Set in a time when Europe has accepted vampires as"people" with the same rights as humanity Toni Lavington's full time job soon brings her hobby and those vampires into close contact.

Packed with incident and enough blood letting to stock a medium sized transfusion centre but not quite as tidily collected Toni finds her life threatened time and again. I enjoyed the characterisation and the narrative certainly entertained, however requires just a little too much suspension of reality for me to put it into my upper echelon of ratings. I would read more from the series which i think could have a very long way to run

Hilarious, steamy, and ... gory. Sign me up.

Zombies, vampires, and a necromancer! Oh yes, all of that blended into a delicious tale, I couldn't put down.

This was totally unexpected. I laughed, cringed, and swooned. What a delicious dark mix that was also somehow light. I was hooked from the start with the fun premise and light feel. I read a lot of genres and love a range of tones and themes, so when heads rolled and guts squished I was all in. Of course add to that a sexy vamp or two and the heated chemistry and really all the things I needed to get done today were going to have to wait while I read, and read, and finished the story.

There is so much character here. Toni is sassy, holding her own with some pretty domineering personalities without being obnoxious. Oscar had me at hello and then Benedict came along, what can I say, I like vamps, the bad-ish ones even more so. Peter was so sweet, making a great contrast to the others. However, my heart belongs to Bredon. That really surprised me, because like I said, I'm usually all in for the naughty vamps, but he was so charming. I just adored every little thing about him.

The pace was zippy, the humor refreshing, and settings easy to imagine as I lost myself to world. I loved that most things were tied up, leaving it a complete and satisfying read, yet there was enough left to make me hungry for more - as if I'd just raised the dead, or been raised from the dead.

I hope there will be more in this series soon. I can't wait to step back into it and have a gory, sexy, laugh with characters who I already feel like are friends.

I requested Grave Secrets by Alice James from NetGalley, with no obligations, as an uncorrected Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) but even without the final polishing, there is no doubt this one is a gem. It’s been an exceptionally long time since I’ve had to stop reading to wipe the tears from my eyes because I was laughing so hard. That’s what happened before I was even a quarter of the way into the book. The protagonist, Lavington (Toni) Windsor, a real estate agent by day and necromancer by night, is delightful as the first-person narrator of this story, a twist on Stephanie Plum with Vampires and Zombies. With lines like, “What I lack in strategy, I make up for in overkill!” Toni barrels through a fast-paced adventure that is not without its share of blood and guts but is also full of warmth and friendship, romance, and great humor. The setting of rugged rural Britain, with cozy village life, is seamlessly woven into the plot and further reinforced by the British colloquialisms peppered throughout the dialogue.
Grave Secrets is the first of a series and the author hints in the Acknowledgements that at least nine more are in the pipe. This debut is due out September 1, 2020 (US) and September 3 (UK) and I would suggest that anyone who enjoys Janet Evanovich and Patricia Brigg’s will love this one.
Posted: June 29, 2020
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This was a nice read. I like paranormal books, with witches, Wolfes, Zombies an Ghouls.
Miss James has woven a good and solid plot, with a really sympathetic heroine und some exciting twists and turns in the storyline.

I really enjoyed reading this book.

Thanks a lot for giving me the opportunity to read it.

I enjoyed this book. It's a unique story, a little gory with all the beheading and such. I really liked the main character although I'm not sure about her relationship with Oscar. I hope this will be a series and can't wait to read the next book. #GraveSecrets #NetGalley

I so hope that this is the start of a series!!

This reminded me of the True Blood Series by Charlene Harris and the famous Sookie Stackhouse it was fab!

Full of fun kept me entertained and engaged throughout can't wait to see what Toni gets up to next!

It seems only fair to start this review with the fact that I burned out on urban fantasy (which is the sub-genre this book fits most neatly into, despite being set in rural Staffordshire) a while back and so Grave Secrets was probably up against it with me. Having said that, the book also had a few issues for me and so I guess I just wasn't the right audience after all.

The basic premise of the book is that vampires are known about and, in Europe at least, regarded with some degree of favour - this stems from a feel-good story involving vampires healing children with leukemia in Germany, which had led to pro-vampire legislation. As a result, our protagonist is quite aware of their existence as well as, unusually for some urban fantasy series, her own powers as a necromancer - in fact, we first meet her in the local cemetery where she's managed to work her way through raising all of its inhabitants one after another. This is the first place I butted heads with the story because while she seems to be creating zombies, they just conveniently appear rather than having to actually get out of their graves, yet are physical enough to do damage to people/vampires as needed.

Anyway, our protagonist (an estate agent who doesn't seem to do very much work at all) gets involved with trying to find the ideal place for a vampire to hang his metaphorical hat, with said vampire being quite hot and someone she's instantly in love with. There we come across issue number 2 for me, which is always how vampires get erections given that they don't have a working circulatory system, but that doesn't seem to stop said vampire from getting it up quite prodigiously. There's also a bit of dubious consent going on, as he doesn't like it when people say 'no' to him and I find that decidedly unsexy.

Anyway, other than the love interest, there's reasonable development going on with a wide range of supporting characters, all of whom would make much more interesting romantic partners for our protagonist. Even the guy she raises from the dead at the beginning. The plot itself involves quite a bit of driving around the countryside, as well as fussing about clothes and hair, not to mention a lot of those clothes subsequently getting torn off or removed, one way or another. It's also not really a great book for anyone squeamish, though if you're reading urban fantasy regularly then you're probably going to be okay with what's going on here.

All in all, not really my cup of tea and could have been so much more interesting if it had gone in a number of other directions. In the end, it turns into reasonably-entertaining urban fantasy by the numbers and that, for me at least, was a little disappointing.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a free copy of this book, which I received in exchange for an honest review.