Variations on said, like answered, commented, added, replied, asked, queried, muttered, snarled, roared, are best used sparingly. They call attention to themselves and sometimes seem strained. Adverbs in speech tags often sound corny—she said kittenishly, he responded sneeringly, she hissed angrily.
An economical and effective way of tagging speech is to follow the line of dialogue with an action or a thought by the speaker:

“I’m surprised you came here.” Frank jumped up from his chair.
“I am too.” Eva looked past Frank, out the window, as if she did not want to admit that they were in the same room.