Genre: romantic suspense

Review: Her Other Secret by HelenKay Dimon + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Her Other Secret by HelenKay Dimon + GiveawayHer Other Secret: A Novel by HelenKay Dimon
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Whitaker Island #1
Pages: 384
Published by Avon on June 25, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads


Is it the perfect escape?

 Whitaker Island is more than a getaway. For Tessa Jenkins, the remote strip of land in Washington state is a sanctuary. Fleeing from a shattering scandal, she has a new name, a chance at a new beginning, and a breathtaking new view: Hansen Rye. It’s hard not to crush on Whitaker’s hottest handyman. At six-foot-three and all kinds of fine, he’s also intensely private—and the attraction between them soon simmers dangerously out of control.


…or a private trap for two lovers?

After a devastating family tragedy, Hansen finds the pebbled shores of the faraway island to be an ideal refuge. Letting down his guard for the sexy, impulsive Tessa is an unexpected pleasure. But there’s another newcomer to Whitaker. He’s no stranger to Hansen. And when he’s murdered, the crime casts a threatening shadow. As suspicion falls on Hansen, all his secrets are about to collide with Tessa’s. Now the pasts they were determined to outrun are catching up to them. So is a killer who’s putting their love—and their lives—on the line.

My Review:

Don’t let the hottie on the cover fool you – as he tries to do to every single person on Whitaker Island. Her Other Secret is definitely romantic suspense, and that hottie has plenty to hide.

As does our heroine – as well as every single other resident of this tiny island off the coast of Washington State. But only some of those secrets are deadly.

While everyone on Whitaker is running away from something, it’s hottie Hansen Rye’s secrets that have come to get him – not that he knows that – at least at first.

Tessa Jenkins has been watching a yacht parked in the water opposite her tiny cottage for more than 24 hours, and she’s had enough. Something has to be wrong. The marina has plenty of space – and its on the other side of the island.

There are no lights on the boat – and no movement. It’s interesting that Tessa doesn’t think it’s her own secrets that have come to get her, but then, the person looking for her is generally a whole lot splashier than anything happening on that boat – which seems to be nothing at all.

Tessa is currently on the outs with the island’s only cop, so when she can’t stand the suspense any longer, she calls the person that everyone on Whitaker calls when they need something done. She calls Hansen, the resident handyman – and Tessa’s secret crush.

Not that Hansen isn’t the secret crush of every woman on the island – single or not – and probably some of the men as well. He’s gorgeous. A complete grump to the point of being an antisocial asshole, but gorgeous.

And generally useful. He fixes everything that’s broken, so Tessa is sure that he can fix whatever must be wrong with that silent, parked boat. That it’s a good excuse to call him is just icing on the cake.

That’s when things go pear-shaped. As Hansen and Tessa argue about going out to the boat, a man walks out of the water, fully dressed in a business suit, and heads inland – right past them. It’s weird. Really, really weird – especially when the man disappears.

It gets weirder still when the man turns up dead on Tessa’s front yard the next day. And all of Hansen’s secrets come out. And Tessa’s comes to the island to get her.

Escape Rating B: This is one of those stories that can best be described as “oddly charming”. I liked it, I enjoyed reading it, but it doesn’t hold up to a whole lot of scrutiny. It’s what I call “mind candy”. A good reading time that does not require deep thought that I probably won’t remember this time next year. But fun while I on Whitaker Island with Hansen and Tessa. It’s a beach read, ironically (or not) set mostly on a beach!

The setup of Whitaker Island, both the way it works and the people who inhabit it, was interesting. All 200 or so residents merely rent their cottages – there’s a mysterious owner behind the scenes who actually owns everything. There’s no government – just a governing board. One firefighter and one cop – both employees of that mysterious owner. Who remains mysterious throughout the book. I kept expecting him, her or it to be revealed, but they were not. (There’s a second book in this series, The Secret She Keeps, coming out in December. Maybe all will be revealed then.)

Whitaker seems to be a place where people escape from the rat race but bring all the rats with them – including their own ratty selves. Everyone has something to hide, and everyone gossips like it’s going out of season – which of course it never does.

I liked both Hansen and Tessa, as well as the way they got together, but I think that their respective secrets were both a bit over-the-top, contributing to the whole “fun while it lasted” vibe of the story.

While not giving those secrets away, it felt like Tessa’s secret just wasn’t nearly as big or as bad as she made it out to be. And the “ripped from the headlines” reasons for that secret didn’t quite gel.

Hansen’s secrets, on the other hand, were so big and so bad and ended up being so convoluted that they ended up in “bwahaha” villain territory. And I did figure out whodunnit way before our protagonists and wondered why they didn’t feel the clue-by-four whizzing over their heads.

But then, the epic storms cutting off the island and isolating the villagers may have had something to do with their distraction – not to mention their on-its-way-to-resolution sexual and emotional tension.

They were busy!

In the end, a good reading time was had by all. Her Other Secret feels like it would be a great beach read – at least as long as a corpse doesn’t turn up on your stretch of beach!

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

To celebrate the release of HER OTHER SECRET by HelenKay Dimon, we’re giving away a paperback set of Her Other Secret and The Protector by HelenKay Dimon to one lucky winner!

LINK:  http://bit.ly/2EQgLJt 

GIVEAWAY TERMS & CONDITIONS:  Open to US shipping addresses only. One winner will receive a paperback set of Her Other Secret and The Protector by HelenKay Dimon. This giveaway is administered by Pure Textuality PR on behalf of Avon Books.  Giveaway ends 7/15/2019 @ 11:59pm EST.

Review; Tightrope by Amanda Quick + Excerpt

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Excerpts
Review; Tightrope by Amanda Quick + ExcerptTightrope (Burning Cove, #3) by Amanda Quick
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical romance, romantic suspense
Series: Burning Cove #3
Pages: 320
Published by Berkley on May 7, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From the Author's website: An unconventional woman and a man shrouded in mystery walk a tightrope of desire as they race against a killer to find a machine that could change the world.

Former trapeze artist Amalie Vaughn moved to Burning Cove to reinvent herself, but things are not going well. After spending her entire inheritance on a mansion with the intention of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast, she learns too late that the villa is said to be cursed. When the first guest, Dr. Norman Pickwell, is murdered by his robot invention during a sold-out demonstration, rumors circulate that the curse is real.

In the chaotic aftermath of the spectacle, Amalie watches as a stranger from the audience disappears behind the curtain. When Matthias Jones reappears, he is slipping a gun into a concealed holster. It looks like the gossip that is swirling around him is true—Matthias evidently does have connections to the criminal underworld.

Matthias is on the trail of a groundbreaking prototype cipher machine. He suspects that Pickwell stole the device and planned to sell it. But now Pickwell is dead and the machine has vanished. When Matthias’s investigation leads him to Amalie’s front door, the attraction between them is intense, but she knows it is also dangerous. Amalie and Matthias must decide if they can trust each other and the passion that binds them, because time is running out.

My Review:

And we finally get the link – or at least a tangential link –  if not to Scargill Cove (which I still think must be just up the coast) then to the Arcane Society. It’s there if you squint – and I was certainly squinting for it – but if you haven’t read any of the author’s Arcane Society books in any of its eras under any of her names, Tightrope still works well as a standalone, as the latest entry in the Burning Cove series, and as a terrific story of a heroine in jeopardy and the man who comes – not to rescue her – but to stand beside her as she rescues herself.

Just like the other books in this series, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and The Other Lady Vanishes, this story begins with a particularly gruesome murder, and with our heroine on the run. Even if in this particular case our heroine doesn’t actually know it.

Amalie’s running is just a bit less fraught than either Irene’s (Girl) or Adelaide’s (Lady), as Amalie Vaughan may be suspected of having murdered the rigger in her last circus, but she was never officially charged with anything. Nor should she have been.

After all, she didn’t murder him – he tried to murder her.

But when another murder happens almost literally on her doorstep, she can’t help but wonder if bad luck is following her. After all, she bought the Hidden Cove Inn at a bargain basement price after the events of The Other Lady Vanishes, when a noted Hollywood psychic threw herself from the roof.

Now one of her guests has been killed just down the road in the middle of his own show – by his very own robot! Amalie can’t help but wonder if she’s doomed to fail. All the Hollywood reporters who stake out Burning Cove are certain to give her inn endless pages of bad publicity – especially after someone breaks into the place in the middle of the night.

The only question is whether the purpose of the break-in is to search the late robot inventor’s room – or to finish up the job that the rigger intended at that last circus performance.

When rumored mobster (and real life covert agent) Matthias Jones convinces Amalie that he needs to stay at Hidden Cove both to protect her AND to keep an eye on things, it’s just the beginning of the adventure.

Because there’s much more going on in Burning Cove than just a crazy inventor and a runaway machine. And the chemistry between Matthias and Amalie is more incendiary than anything ever cooked up in his great-great-great-grandfather’s alchemical laboratory.

Escape Rating A-: Tightrope was a whole lot of fun, just like the other two books in Burning Cove. And also like all of the author’s books in the Arcane Society/Harmony series. But Burning Cove is only tangentially (very tangentially) related to the Arcane Society, and you certainly don’t have to have read any of that to enjoy this. It also stands alone relative to the other books in the Burning Cove series. But if you have read the whole thing, it is interesting to see the characters from the previous books again.

Burning Cove is a fascinating place. It’s close enough to LA for the Hollywood stars to use it both as a getaway and as a place to see and be seen.

One of the many fascinating side characters in Tightrope is fading actor Vincent Hyde, someone who was best known for his many horror films but who has come to Burning Cove to stay at Amalie’s “psychic murder mansion” in the hopes of generating some much-needed publicity for his failing career.

Vincent Hyde’s name sounds like an homage to the great horror actor Vincent Price, but the progress, or rather the downward trajectory of his career sounds a lot like the career of Bela Lugosi, a career which ended in the deliciously execrable cult classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Hyde’s presence in the story, and in Burning Cove, is just the tip of one of the many layers of the story. Hyde is in town to meet with one of the legendary Hollywood gossip columnists – a woman who can make or break his remaining career. She’s in town to follow up on the inventor’s “death by robot” and so are a surprising number of others.

Because this is Hollywood, or close enough, and no one is exactly who they seem to be. Not Amalie, not Matthias, and certainly not Luther Pell, the man who seems to be running Burning Cove.

The story begins because a crazy circus performer has made a career of staging the last and final performance of too many beautiful trapeze artists – without a net. It ends with spies and secrets.

In the middle there’s a marvelous adventure, a combustible romance, and the exploration of a relationship that dives deeply into the value of trust and the danger of lies. Lies to oneself, lies to loved ones – and lies told at the highest levels of government.

It’s the 1930s, war is coming. Gentlemen may not read each other’s mail, but governments certainly do.

Excerpt from Tightrope

“There is no need to fear robots,” Dr. Pickwell declared. It was clear that the suggestion that robots would displace workers annoyed him. He raised his voice to be heard above the murmurs of the crowd. “I urge you to consider that these machines could take the place of soldiers. Wars of the future will be fought with robots, not human beings. Think of the lives that will be saved.”

“You’re mad,” someone else shouted. “You want to create robots that can kill? What if these machines of yours decide to turn on their creators and try to destroy us?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pickwell snapped. “Robots are nothing more than mechanical devices. Fundamentally, they are no different than the cars we drive or the radios that we use to get our news.”

“Futuro looks mighty dangerous to me,” the man in the front row called.

“Nonsense,” Pickwell said. “Allow me to demonstrate how useful Futuro can be. Futuro, what is the forecast for tomorrow?”

The robot answered in a scratchy, hollow voice. “There will be fog in the morning but by noon the day will turn warm and sunny. No rain is expected.”

Pickwell faced his audience. “Think about how useful it would be to have Futuro in your home at your beck and call. It won’t be long before there will be robots that can cook and clean and do the laundry.”

But the crowd was no longer paying any attention to Pickwell, because Futuro had once again lurched into motion.

“What’s that thing doing?” Hazel whispered.

“I have no idea,” Amalie said.

They watched along with everyone else as the robot opened the suitcase that it had just placed on the bench. Pickwell finally realized that he had lost the attention of the crowd. He turned away from the podium to see what was going on at the bench.

Futuro reached into the suitcase and took out a gun.

There was a collective gasp from the audience.

“No,” Pickwell shouted. “Futuro, I command you to put down the gun.”

The robot pulled the trigger. Twice. The shots boomed throughout the theater.

Pickwell jerked under the impact of the bullets. He opened his mouth to cry out but he could not speak. He collapsed onto his back.

Futuro calmly clanked offstage, disappearing behind the curtain.

Stunned, Amalie stared at the unmoving figure on the stage. It was a trick, she thought. It had to be some sort of bizarre charade designed to shock the audience.

Most of the crowd evidently believed the same thing. The majority of the people in the seats did not move. They appeared stunned.

But not everyone was frozen in shock. Amalie glimpsed motion out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to look, she saw that Luther Pell and the stranger who had accompanied him to the theater had left their seats and were making their way to the stage steps. They were moving fast, almost as if they had been anticipating trouble.

When they reached the stage they were joined by Oliver Ward, who had managed to move with surprising speed, considering that he had a noticeable limp and was obliged to use a cane. His wife, Irene, was not far behind. She had a notebook in one hand.

Luther Pell and the stranger vanished behind the curtain. Ward crouched beside Pickwell and unfastened the inventor’s tuxedo jacket to expose a blood-soaked white shirt.

The theater manager evidently had been watching the demonstration from the last row. He rushed down the center aisle toward the stage.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” he shouted.

Amalie saw a middle-aged man in the center section make his way quickly down the aisle.

“I’m a doctor,” he said in a loud voice. “Call an ambulance.”

The manager disappeared through a side door, presumably in search of a telephone.

Onstage, Ward was using both hands to try to staunch the bleeding. The doctor arrived and quickly took charge.

Luther Pell reappeared from behind the curtains. He looked at Oliver Ward and shook his head. Ward looked grim.

The stranger finally emerged from behind the curtain. He was in the act of reaching inside his white evening jacket. Amalie caught a glimpse of something metallic just before the elegantly tailored coat fell neatly back into place.

It took her a couple of seconds to comprehend what she had just seen. Then understanding struck. Like any self-respecting mobster, Luther Pell’s friend from out of town had come to the theater armed with a gun.

Review: Connections in Death by J.D. Robb

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Connections in Death by J.D. RobbConnections in Death (In Death, #48) by J.D. Robb
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: futuristic, romantic suspense
Series: In Death #48
Pages: 384
Published by St. Martin's Press on February 5, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In this gritty and gripping new novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, Eve Dallas fights to save the innocent—and serve justice to the guilty—on the streets of New York.

Homicide cop Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband, Roarke, are building a brand-new school and youth shelter. They know that the hard life can lead kids toward dangerous crossroads—and with this new project, they hope to nudge a few more of them onto the right path. For expert help, they hire child psychologist Dr. Rochelle Pickering—whose own brother pulled himself out of a spiral of addiction and crime with Rochelle’s support.

Lyle is living with Rochelle while he gets his life together, and he’s thrilled to hear about his sister’s new job offer. But within hours, triumph is followed by tragedy. Returning from a celebratory dinner with her boyfriend, she finds Lyle dead with a syringe in his lap, and Eve’s investigation confirms that this wasn’t just another OD. After all his work to get clean, Lyle’s been pumped full of poison—and a neighbor with a peephole reports seeing a scruffy, pink-haired girl fleeing the scene.

Now Eve and Roarke must venture into the gang territory where Lyle used to run, and the ugly underground world of tattoo parlors and strip joints where everyone has taken a wrong turn somewhere. They both believe in giving people a second chance. Maybe even a third or fourth. But as far as they’re concerned, whoever gave the order on Lyle Pickering’s murder has run out of chances…

My Review:

There’s a certain interpretation of this story that says that the whole thing is a bad lawyer joke. Not that the joke is bad, although many lawyer jokes are, but that this is just the kind of story that leads to people telling jokes about lawyers, sharks and professional courtesy. Another way of putting it would be that this is a story that illustrates exactly why Shakespeare wrote, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Unlike so many of the books in this series, Connections in Death doesn’t actually start with a dead body – not that one isn’t found soon enough. Also, unlike many books in the series, while the victim is connected to Roarke and Dallas, the connection is at a couple of degrees removed – and does not result in a trip to the angst factory – at least not for them.

Not that there isn’t plenty to disturb their lives and their hearts. The victim, Lyle Pickering, was a young man who had managed to turn a whole lot of corners in his relatively short life. He had been a gang member, and he had been hooked on drugs. Then he went to prison, and did what we always hope happens but doesn’t nearly often enough.

He grabbed the hands that reached out to help him find himself again. And he made it out. All the way out, with the help of counselors and sponsors and a family that believed in him and one hell of a lot of intestinal fortitude.

Only to be struck down when his ex-girlfriend conned him into believing that she had come to him for help – and not just to let in the three gang members who killed him and tried to stage his death as an overdose.

Dallas doesn’t believe the setup for a New York minute – not just because Lyle’s sister has been offered the job as head therapist at Roarke’s latest project. Although that weighs in. What tips the scale from OD to murder really, really fast is just how sloppy the murderers were in their staging.

They weren’t just sloppy – they were downright stupid. And that’s what does them in. Not just the ones who did the job, but the one who ordered the hit – and eventually reaches out to the dirty lawyer at the bottom of the cesspool.

It’s too bad, too sad, that a good man had to die to clean up so much corruption. It’s not exactly worth it – but Eve Dallas, as always, cleans up the dirt.

Escape Rating B: At this point – 48 books and counting – I’m reading this series because I love all the characters. It doesn’t really matter what the case turns out to be – I just want to see how all my friends are doing.

And every entry in this series is guaranteed to pull me right into the action and whisk me away from whatever I’m doing for a few hours – no matter what. In this particular case the what was a very long plane trip that flew by figuratively as well as literally – although I’m sure my seatmates occasionally wondered what I was laughing about.

This isn’t a funny story by any means, but there is plenty of humor in the constant, ongoing bickering and bantering in Dallas’ cop shop – and I enjoy every line of it.

As a case, this particular book is on the lighter side – or perhaps that should be “slighter” side. Lyle’s murder is certainly a terrible thing for his family. But the case is slighter in the sense that while it troubles Dallas, it doesn’t give her nightmares about her despicable father’s treatment of her, and doesn’t drag some loser/user out of either Dallas’ or Roarke’s past.

It is, however, a case that feels like it could happen today with minor changes in technology. This is a story about a world that doesn’t feel like it’s any different from today – at least not as portrayed in the headlines. The gang members do terrible things to each other and their neighborhood, sleazy lawyer is very sleazy, everybody justifies their own behavior, and people are idiots. LOTS of people are idiots.

One does get the feeling that this is a cesspit that everyone knows about and that no one has bothered to do the work of cleaning up until a murder puts it into Dallas’ path.

This is one of those cases that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but is still very satisfying to see wrap up. A lot of very bad people go down very hard – and it’s as cathartic as ever to watch evil – even petty, small time evil – get its just desserts served up with style.

Review: Untouchable by Jayne Ann Krentz

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Untouchable by Jayne Ann KrentzUntouchable (Cutler, Sutter & Salinas, #3) by Jayne Ann Krentz
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: romantic suspense
Series: Cutler Sutter & Salinas #3
Pages: 336
Published by Berkley on January 8, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A man's quest to find answers for those who are haunted by the past leads him deeper into the shadows in this electrifying novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Promise Not to Tell.

Quinton Zane is back.

Jack Lancaster, consultant to the FBI, has always been drawn to the coldest of cold cases, the kind that law enforcement either considers unsolvable or else has chalked up to accidents or suicides. As a survivor of a fire, he finds himself uniquely compelled by arson cases. His almost preternatural ability to get inside the killer's head has garnered him a reputation in some circles--and complicated his personal life. The more cases Jack solves, the closer he slips into the darkness. His only solace is Winter Meadows, a meditation therapist. After particularly grisly cases, Winter can lead Jack back to peace.

But as long as Quinton Zane is alive, Jack will not be at peace for long. Having solidified his position as the power behind the throne of his biological family's hedge fund, Zane sets out to get rid of Anson Salinas's foster sons, starting with Jack.

My Review:

“They say you can buy anything online these days.” In this case, the “they” in question are the two protagonists in Untouchable. Certainly one of the “anything” you can buy is a good book.

Unfortunately, while Untouchable isn’t a bad read at all, it just doesn’t quite live up to the thrill-a-minute pace of its predecessors, When All the Girls Have Gone and Promise Not to Tell. But anyone who has read the first two really needs to read this one as well. Because Untouchable is where we finally get the closure that we’ve (along with Max Cutler, Caleb Sutter and Anson Salinas) have been waiting for.

Jack Lancaster is the “fourth Musketeer” of the private investigations firm of Cutler, Sutter and Salinas. He’s one of the children that retired police officer Anson Salinas rescued from the fire that was intended to tie up all of the loose ends at Quinton Zane’s cult headquarters. It almost worked. The fire covered Zane’s tracks and killed all the adults in the compound, including the mothers of all three boys.

And it left those boys, along with their foster father, with a burning desire to bring Quinton Zane to justice – no matter how many times Zane managed to fake his own death, or how long it might take.

The cases that Max Cutler (When All the Girls Have Gone) and Caleb Sutter (Promise Not to Tell) have solved have led the team to the conclusion that Quinton Zane isn’t just alive, but that he’s back in the U.S. after years abroad.

Now it’s Jack’s turn to do what he does best – put all the nebulous pieces together and solve the ice cold case that began in so much fire.

Escape Rating B-: I’m putting the rating in early in the review so that I can talk about the story in a bit more detail.

I’m in a bit of a quandary, because the closure provided by this story is really necessary after the first two books in the series. But in the end, it just doesn’t live up to them. I’m not sure that’s a big problem, because it also can’t be read as a standalone. So much of the tension in this story revolves around Jack’s (and his foster father and brothers’) lifelong obsession with Quinton Zane. If you weren’t there for the first books you’re not going be interested in this one.

This book also has a feel that reminds me a lot more of the author’s Arcane Society books. Jack’s talent for lucid dreaming, and the way that it is expressed, reads a lot like the way that Arcane talents manifest in the Dreamlight trilogy, and Jack himself reads a lot like one of the hunters from Harmony.

Winter Meadows’ master of hypnotism also fits right into the Arcane Society. As does the conspiracy theorist Arizona Snow. Both Snow and the little town of Eclipse Bay feature in Running Hot, a story in the Arcane Society series. There’s also a nod to Burning Cove – the location of her currently in-progress historical romantic suspense series under her Amanda Quick pen name.

So this story contains a lot of nods to other places and scenarios that this author has created. Not enough to pull readers unfamiliar out of this story, but certainly enough to put a smile of recognition on the face of those who ARE familiar.

As romantic suspense, Untouchable needs both a mystery/thriller plot and a romantic element. The mystery is provided by the cat and mouse game between Jack and Quinton Zane. The romance is provided by the relationship that springs up between Jack and Winter Meadows.

And while their love scenes are plenty hot, there’s not enough emotional build-up to “sell” the romance. Not that we don’t want them to find their HEA, but we don’t feel with them enough. Or at least I didn’t. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

In the end the wrap up of the series was satisfactory, but the individual entry in it was not. I usually love this author and wish that I’d liked this book better. I’m now very curious to see how her next book, Tightrope, third in the Burning Cove series written as Amanda Quick, works for me – and everyone else.

Review: The Frame-Up by Meghan Scott Molin + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: The Frame-Up by Meghan Scott Molin + GiveawayThe Frame-Up (The Golden Arrow #1) by Meghan Scott Molin
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: romantic suspense
Series: Golden Arrow #1
Pages: 287
Published by 47North on December 1, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

By day she writes comic books. By night, she lives them.

MG Martin lives and breathes geek culture. She even works as a writer for the comic book company she idolized as a kid. But despite her love of hooded vigilantes, MG prefers her comics stay on the page.

But when someone in LA starts recreating crime scenes from her favorite comic book, MG is the LAPD’s best—and only—lead. She recognizes the golden arrow left at the scene as the calling card of her favorite comic book hero. The thing is…superheroes aren’t real. Are they?

When the too-handsome-for-his-own-good Detective Kildaire asks for her comic book expertise, MG is more than up for the adventure. Unfortunately, MG has a teeny little tendency to not follow rules. And her off-the-books sleuthing may land her in a world of trouble.

Because for every superhero, there is a supervillain. And the villain of her story may be closer than she thinks…

My Review:

First of all, think of Batman. Not because he appears in this story, except by mention. As does every geeky/nerdy movie, TV show, book, comic and game that you can think of. And a few you probably can’t. (Not just because a few of the geek references are made up for the purposes of this story, but because no geek, no matter how dedicated, is into absolutely every geekish everything on every geekish axis. I say this as someone who is fairly geeky, and recognized most but not quite all of the references and in-jokes.)

And I’m not sure if someone without at least a passing knowledge of geekdom will enjoy this story, because there are a LOT of in-jokes. And while the point of the romance part of the plot is that MG finally realizes that she doesn’t need to find someone who knows the ins and outs of geek culture in order to find her happily ever after, it does help the reader to know what at least some of what the flying references refer to.

Back to Batman. Among all of the famous superheroes, Batman is the one who is just “original recipe” human. He may be incredibly rich, and probably has a heaping helping of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but underneath the batsuit is just a (usually really, really buff) man. No extra-terrestrial origin, no mythic ancestors, no science experiment gone wrong. Just as Batman responds in Justice League to the question, “What are your superpowers again?”. His answer, “I’m rich.”. And that’s all.

The “caped crusader” who turns out to be at the heart of the mystery in The Frame-Up, the Hooded Falcon, is just like Batman. Not nearly as rich, but just as human. And only human. Excessively trained, and with a desire to see justice done, but merely human.

As a comic book, the original Hooded Falcon died decades before the opening of the events in this story, but MG Martin is a writer for Genius Comics, the company founded on the popularity of the Hooded Falcon. And even though the Falcon’s original creator is long since dead, his son still publishes a comic under the Hooded Falcon name – admittedly without any of his father’s, or his father’s creation’s spirit.

But someone in LA is committing crimes that recreate panels from the classic Hooded Falcon adventures. This person seems to have taken up either the banner of the Falcon himself, or perhaps that of the Falcon’s creator. Either way, there’s a vigilante on the streets of LA who has put himself (or possibly herself) in the sights of LA’s current generation of drug kingpins.

The police want to stop the crime spree before it’s too late. After a chance encounter, Detective Matteo Kildaire recruits MG as a police consultant expert on all things geek in general, and on her hero the Hooded Falcon in particular.

But all the clues point much, much too close to home, both for MG and Matteo. When his creator died, the Hooded Falcon was on the trail of both the drug kingpins AND the dirty cop who was covering for them.

History seems to be repeating, with both MG and Matteo caught in the crossfire. This time it’s not a crossfire of BAM and KAPOW, but real guns firing real bullets and dealing real death. They have to find the faces behind the masks, before it’s too late for our heroes.

After all, in real life there’s no possibility of a failure saving reboot if they get it wrong.

Escape Rating B-: The Frame-Up felt a bit like two books in one. One book that I really liked, and one that I really didn’t.

The first third or so of the story is the setup. We get introduced to MG, her coworkers at Genius Comics, and the opening frames of her relationship with Matteo. That relationship begins by being intimately tied to the case – not that it doesn’t take on a life of its own.

But the introduction to MG’s world is hard to take. MG is the lone female at Genius Comics. We see things entirely from her perspective, and that’s a realistically scary place to be. Geekdom in general, and geekdom-creation spaces in particular, are rightfully notorious for their misogynistic dudebro culture. Women are made to feel unwelcome, and it’s deliberate. MG is correct in her belief that she has to be “more badass” than any of the guys just to be taken half as seriously  – no matter how unfair it is or how much it hurts to be that defensive all the time.

Matteo, with his need to find an “in” so that he can surreptitiously scope out the company, absolutely DOES undermine MG’s position. That she falls for him rather than boot him to the curb at the first opportunity rankles quite a lot.

And the whole setup makes for very hard reading.

Once things are significantly setup, the story kicks into a higher gear and becomes a lot of fun.

The mystery is definitely a wild and crazy ride, only missing a few scattered BAMs and KAPOWs to make it completely part of the comic hero genre. I really liked MG’s nerdiness and felt for her desire to be her authentic best self. I particularly liked the way that Matteo, while he is a “virgin” when it comes to geek culture, is open minded about everything he experiences. It’s easy to see that he accepts MG for who she is, loves her as she is, and doesn’t feel any need to cram her into a box that won’t fit – as her parents and so many people in her life have previously tried to do.

The case has a lot of heart to it. It’s about children taking care of, writing wrongs for, or attempting to get past the legacies of their parents. It’s about superheroes and supervillains, and how real people come to fit into those places – whether they intend to or not.

And in the best superhero tradition, good triumphs, evil gets its just deserts, and the hero and heroine live happily ever after. At least until the next supervillain comes along…

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

I’m giving away a copy of The Frame-Up to one lucky US commenter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Mission: Her Rescue by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Mission: Her Rescue by Anna HackettMission: Her Rescue (Team 52 #2) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, military romance, romantic suspense
Series: Team 52 #2
Pages: 220
Published by Anna Hackett on October 7th 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

When archeologist January’s plane is shot down over the Guatemalan jungle, she knows she’s being hunted for the invaluable Mayan artifacts she’s carrying. Only one man and his team can save her…the covert, black ops Team 52, and the distrusting former CIA operative who drives her crazy…

Dr. January James has a motto: live life to the fullest. A terrible incident in her past, where she lost both her mother and her innocence, taught her that. Now she spends her days on archeological digs doing the work she loves. When her team uncovers a pair of dangerous artifacts in an overgrown temple, she knows they need to be secured and safeguarded. But someone else knows about the artifacts…and will kill to get them.

Working for the CIA, Seth Lynch learned the hard way that people lie and will always stab you in the back. He has the scars to prove it. He lives for his work with Team 52—ensuring pieces of powerful ancient technology don’t fall into the wrong hands. When he learns that the feisty, independent archeologist who works his last nerve has died in a plane crash, he makes it his mission to discover who the hell is responsible.

Deep in the jungle, Seth rescues a very-much alive January and it is up to him to keep both her and the artifacts safe. Hunted from every side, their attraction is explosive and fiery, but with January’s life on the line, Seth must fight his own demons in order to rescue the woman he can no longer resist.

My Review:

In this followup to the first book in the series, Mission: Her Protection, the circumstances are just a bit different but the outcome ends up being very, very similar. Archaeologist January Jones already knows who and what Team 52 is and does – because they “appropriated” an artifact from one of her previous digs.

This time she’s on her way to Area 52 willingly, because she knows that whatever her team has found its every bit as much their bailiwick as it is hers. Meaning that while the two solid jade orbs are certainly a priceless archaeological treasure, there is also something uncanny about them. They may be the key to the power of the ancient and secretive Snake Kings, but that key is also trouble that Team 52 is better equipped to deal with than she is.

A conclusion that is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt when her plane back to civilization from the jungles of Guatemala is shot down in the middle of said jungle by a group intent on killing her and taking the orbs. January is rescued in the nick of time by Team 52, who are equally intent on saving both her and the orbs – particularly Team 52 agent Seth Lynch, who is more intent on January than those orbs.

Seth and January have tangled before – on that previous occasion when Team 52 tried to take her artifacts first and talk second. January clipped him upside the head with a metal pipe in the process and no one has let him forget it. Not that he could forget. Something about January gets right under his skin and pisses him off every time they meet.

They dislike each other with an intensity that is clearly hiding a lot of other things that neither of them is ready or willing to feel. But sharing a near-death experience does have a way of stripping the inhibitions – especially when those are inhibitions that a person really, really needs to let go of.

In spite of the flare of heat that rises between them, they are coming from very opposite perspectives. January’s response to tragedy is to live life to the fullest, and feel things to the utmost. Seth’s response has been to emotionally cut himself off from trusting other people – and that includes January. That especially includes January.

A mistake that nearly costs both of them everything.

Escape Rating B+: I still find the titles of this series to be endlessly cheesy – however the stories are anything but. Unless one considers the cheese to be well-toasted over a very hot flame – because there’s plenty of heat between the hero and heroine.

At least so far, this is not a series where you need to read from the beginning. I enjoyed Mission: Her Protection a lot, it’s a terrific action-adventure romance – as is Mission: Her Rescue – but the stories don’t build on one another very much. There’s more of an introduction to the team and its work in the first book but not so much that a new reader can’t pick it up from context in this one.

Team 52 is also a spinoff of the author’s previous action-adventure romance series, Treasure Hunter Security. But again, prior knowledge of that series isn’t required for this one. There are a couple of mentions of people from THS, but they are minor mentions. It was enough to give a fan reader like myself a smile of recognition, but not knowing wouldn’t take anything away from enjoying this book.

The two things outside of THS that the Team 52 series reminds me of are Stargate and M.L. Buchman’s military romances, particularly his Night Stalkers series. Team 52, both the way that it seeks out previously hidden advanced tech and the way that its base operates – as well as where it operates – seem very similar to the Earth-bound parts of Stargate Command. There’s just no gate. Stargate also had a warehouse in Area 51 – right next door to the Team 52 operation and warehouse in Area 52.

The romances remind me of the Night Stalkers series quite a bit. Seth Lynch in particular is very similar to Colonel Michael Gibson in Bring On the Dusk. Both of them are secret operatives and both have serious trust issues. But the whole Night Stalkers series are military romance where the heroes and the heroines are equals in every single way, and that is the feeling that is also captured in Team 52. No damsels ever get rescued – they rescue themselves and sometimes they rescue the hero as well, and not just in the emotional sense.

One of the other ways that Team 52 resembles military romance as well as action-adventure is that all of the protagonists, both male and female are scarred in one way or another. Sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically, sometimes both. These are all people who have been seriously carved up by life, whether because they live life on the edge or because their previous experience has pushed them that way. A big part of each story is the way that they make each other strong in their broken places.

That they often end up fused together by the heat they make together is icing on a very delicious cake!

Review: Leverage in Death by J D Robb

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Leverage in Death by J D RobbLeverage in Death (In Death, #47) by J.D. Robb
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: futuristic, mystery, romantic suspense
Series: In Death #47
Pages: 385
Published by St. Martin's Press on September 4, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Lieutenant Eve Dallas puzzles over a bizarre suicide bombing in a Wall St. office building in the latest in the #1 New York Times bestselling series…

For the airline executives finalizing a merger that would make news in the business world, the nine a.m. meeting would be a major milestone. But after marketing VP Paul Rogan walked into the plush conference room, strapped with explosives, the headlines told of death and destruction instead. The NYPSD’s Eve Dallas confirms that Rogan was cruelly coerced by two masked men holding his family hostage. His motive was saving his wife and daughter―but what was the motive of the masked men?

Despite the chaos and bad publicity, blowing up one meeting isn’t going to put the brakes on the merger. All it’s accomplished is shattering a lot of innocent lives. Now, with the help of her billionaire husband Roarke, Eve must untangle the reason for an inexplicable act of terror, look at suspects inside and outside both corporations, and determine whether the root of this crime lies in simple sabotage, or something far more complex and twisted.

My Review:

At first, this one seemed like it was all about the money. A lot of crimes are all about the money, which is how the mystery solving cliches “follow the money” and the Latin “Cui bono?” (translated as “Who benefits”) came into being. But the way that money motivates in this story felt more like the version from the movie Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money”. Because while it is definitely about the money, it also ends up feeling like the money is as much about keeping score as it is about dollars and cents.

Not that there aren’t plenty of dollars and cents involved.

It all begins with a murder, as so many books in this series do. But not just a simple little murder. This is a big, well, more middle-sized kind of murder. It’s a bomb. It’s a crazy guy in a suicide vest blowing up a big meeting (literally) and taking out a bunch of corporate bigwigs.

Sounds like terrorism, doesn’t it? But if it were that simple, Lieutenant Eve Dallas wouldn’t need to spend an entire book solving it. Terrorism isn’t her beat – homicide is. Once her cops discover that the poor bomber was as much of a victim as all the others who were killed or injured in the explosion, the case becomes a whole lot more local, and a whole lot more complicated.

If you read the forex brokers reviews – business24-7, you know, it’s all about the money. Specifically, as the title says, it’s about leverage. The bomb goes off in the middle of a big meeting to sign a merger between rival airlines. The bomb goes off, and both of their stock prices go way, way down. But both companies are solid, both have succession plans in place, and the merger is back on in less than a day. The stocks go back up, way, way up. Past the point they were before that bomb went off.

Anyone who knew in advance what was going to happen had the opportunity to buy very, very low and sell very, very high. And make a killing – pun very definitely intended. Which makes for a hell of a cold-blooded motive for murder.

But for the killers, the whole thing is so much of a rush that they do it again, this time manipulating the art market instead of the stock market.

It’s up to Dallas, with the help of her expert civilian consultant as well as the rest of her team, to discover whodunit and why, before they move on to play their games yet again – or before they disappear for good.

That it’s also a great excuse for Dallas to avoid the Oscar red carpet, where her friend Nadine Furst is up for multiple awards for her movie based on one of Eve’s more famous cases, is just icing on the Dallas and Roarke cake.

Escape Rating B: This series is comfort read for me. That may sound strange, as the books always begin with a murder. But good triumphs, evil always gets its just desserts,  and all the mysteries are wrapped up at the end in a neat bow. But this series is also a case (no pun intended this time) where it’s the cast and crew that I always love to see. The stories always make me laugh, not because the series is intentionally humorous, but because it’s just the kind of humor that I like, where it arises out of the situations and the characters and isn’t an attempt to BE funny, it just IS funny.

I’m particularly fond of Eve and Roarke’s cat Galahad, who is large and in charge and pretty much all cat, all the time. Galahad, bless his furry heart, does not solve crimes. He is, however, very good at the things that cats are very good at, particularly in knowing when his people need some purry affection, and knowing when the best time to interrupt in the hope of getting treats or attention will be. And the entire bed is his, which is completely normal. Possession is 9/10ths of the cat – even the fictional cat. Perhaps especially the fictional cat.

This is also not one of their regular trips to the angst factory – which is good because that wasn’t what I was in the mood for. Eve and Roarke both had hellacious childhoods, and they both have plenty of trauma that they are still dealing with well into adulthood. But there are occasions when someone either tied into one of their pasts or bearing too strong a resemblance to one of their bastard fathers shows up and drags in a whole baggage train of past crap. One of those every once in a while is more than enough. And that isn’t one of those – the occasional nightmare notwithstanding. Anyone who survived either of their childhoods would have the occasional, or more likely the regular, nightmare.

There are two threads to this particular story. One is the case itself, and the other is more personal for Dallas’ team, but also hearkens back to one of her earlier cases, which has proven to be a gift that keeps on giving – as the ending of this story proves.

The case is chilling enough – although it does seem to be operating at multiple removes. The killers aren’t doing their own dirty work. They create the setup, then send a pawn out to do the actual deed while making sure that they can get away scot free if it falls apart. The psychology of this one is all about fathers and children and sacrifice and turns out to have plenty of disgusting, oozing layers to work through.

The personal stuff works its way around and through this multiple murder case. I say personal, but it all goes back to the Icove case from Origin in Death , way back in the 22nd novel in this series. Eve’s friend, reporter Nadine Furst, wrote up the case in a best-selling true crime thriller, which was turned into a movie, which is now up for multiple Oscars – and which has left behind a trail of bodies at pretty much every step of the way. Eve would rather be dead than walk the red carpet, but it’s a dream come true for her partner Detective Delia Peabody. A dream that Eve and Roarke, in spite of the murders, manage to make happen.

It makes for a lovely ending for an enjoyable book in this long running series. Dallas and Roarke will be back in February in Connections in Death – and I’m looking forward to it. After all, I have to see just what Galadhad is up to next!

Review: Impostor’s Lure by Carla Neggers

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Impostor’s Lure by Carla NeggersImpostor's Lure (Sharpe & Donovan #8) by Carla Neggers
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, romantic suspense
Series: Sharpe & Donovan #8
Pages: 320
Published by Mira Books on August 21, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Master of suspense and
New York Times
 bestselling author Carla Neggers delivers an exhilarating page-turner where the disappearance of a federal prosecutor launches the latest high-stakes case for FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan.Newlyweds Emma and Colin are suspicious when prosecutor Tamara McDermott is a no-show at a Boston dinner party. Matt Yankowski, head of HIT, Emma and Colin's small, elite Boston-based team, is a friend of Tamara's, and he needs them to find her.In London, a woman who was supposed to meet Emma's art-detective grandfather to talk about forgeries is discovered near death. Her husband, who stayed behind in Boston, has vanished. The couple's connection to Tamara adds to the puzzle.As the search for Tamara intensifies, a seemingly unrelated murder leads Emma, Colin and HIT deep into a maze of misdirection created by a clever, lethal criminal who stays one step ahead of them.As Emma draws on her expertise in art crimes and Colin on his experience as a deep-cover agent, the investigation takes a devastating turn that tests the strengths of their families and friendships as well as their FBI colleagues as never before.
Impostor's Lure
 is full of clever twists that will keep readers guessing right to the stunning conclusion!

My Review:

The Sharpe & Donovan series is somewhere in that borderland between romantic suspense and mystery. Sorta/kinda like a contemporary version of In Death, but in a different place on the romantic suspense/mystery divide than the futuristic series.

At the beginning, Sharpe & Donovan hewed a bit closer to romantic suspense side, as FBI Agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan meet in the middle of an investigation near their hometowns on the coast of Maine. Colin is undercover, and Emma is in the middle of a case that is already much too personal.

Impostor’s Lure takes place a year (and 7 books) after that first meeting in Saint’s Gate. Emma and Colin are now married, and wondering just how long they will be able to continue working art crimes together before Colin gets tasked with yet another long-term undercover mission – his dangerous specialty. And now that their romance has reached its HEA, the story is more about the mystery and less about the romance. However, like many long-running mystery series, there is a “gang” of friends and family that surrounds Emma and Colin – and they have a big part to play in this particular story.

While they are worried about that medium-term problem, something happens much closer to home that puts them in the thick of a case that touches all of their friends and family both in Maine and Ireland.

On the other side of the pond, Emma’s grandfather Wendell, founder of the family art detective firm, discovers the comatose body of a woman who wanted to consult him about forgeries. The case looks like a drug overdose, but Wendell is shaken enough to worry both friends and family.

Over here, Emma and Colin as well as their boss Matt find themselves both shaken and alarmed when a friend who is also a federal prosecutor stands them up for dinner. While the woman could just have decided to start her long-overdue vacation a bit early, she’s also standing up her daughter on the young woman’s one-and-only 21st birthday.

This doesn’t seem right to anyone involved, especially once it turns out that Tamara might have been looking into some very alarming things that her daughter told her about her recent trip to Ireland – a trip that included both a murder and a developing friendship with the woman that Wendell found comatose.

Something is definitely not right. Actually lots of things aren’t right – on both sides of the Atlantic. As the bodies start piling up – and occasionally spilling over – it’s up to Emma and Colin to unravel the mystery and light the darkness at its center before it is too late.

Or at least before it’s more “too late” than it already is.

Escape Rating B: I finished this in one sitting. This is literally true as I was on a flight from California to Atlanta while I read it! This was a good, absorbing mystery to while away about half the flight.

This is definitely not the place to start this series. While, as with all the books in the series, the mystery is solved within this volume, an awful lot of the background revolves around the circle of friends and family that Emma and Colin are very much in the middle of. By the time this story ends, pretty much every one of their friends and most of their family have at least had a walk on part in the solution – and there’s a piece of that solution that only has resonance if you’ve at least read some of the previous books. I don’t think you need to have read them all to enjoy Impostor’s Lure, but at least the first one and one from the middle. Harbor Island and Liar’s Key are a couple of my favorites from the midpoint in the series.

The mystery in Impostor’s Lure is definitely a convoluted one. The perpetrator is certainly a sociopath, which makes that person both very organized and totally without scruples or conscience. They’ve been pulling off a lot of stuff for a very long time, and really only get caught because events have caught up with them and they are forced to act without their usual level of planning.

As a reader, I did not guess the perpetrator until very near the end – and then only because there were too many characters who simply could not be “it” because of their close relationship to Emma and/or Colin.

That being said, I really like the circle of friends and family that Emma and Colin have gathered around them/been gathered into. The group of is very interesting mix of family-of-birth and family-of-choice on both sides of the Atlantic and in both of their hearts. And just like any family, it has a few black sheep, and some members that one of them likes or tolerates more than the other. It’s also a hoot that one member of their family is a former art thief.

It’s always good to visit with this gang, even when some of the visit is bittersweet, as it is in Impostor’s Lure. I’ll be back.

 

Carla Neggers’ IMPOSTOR’S LURE – Review & Excerpt Tour Schedule:

August 20th

It’s All About the Romance – Excerpt

Nerdy Dirty and Flirty – Excerpt

Ripe For Reader – Excerpt

August 21st

Bobo’s Book Bank – Excerpt

Literary misfit – Excerpt

OMGReads – Excerpt

Sip Read Love – Excerpt

August 22nd

Bookstanista – Excerpt

Hearts & Scribbles – Excerpt

What Is That Book About – Excerpt

August 23rd

A Book Nerd, a Bookseller and a Bibliophile – Review & Excerpt

Reading Reality – Review

Words We Love By –Review & Excerpt

August 24th

Cinta Garcia de la Rosa – Excerpt

Wickedcoolflight – Review & Excerpt

August 25th

Bookishly Yours – Review & Excerpt

Catty Jane Book Lovers – Review & Excerpt

Reading Between the Wines Book Club – Excerpt

August 26th

Book Addict – Review & Excerpt

Novel Addiction – Excerpt

Tfaulcbookreviews – Review & Excerpt

August 27th

A Lovely Book Affair – Review

Cali Book Reviews – Review & Excerpt

TBR Book Blog – Excerpt

August 28th

Adventures in Writing – Excerpt

Lisa Book Blog – Excerpt

August 29th

BTH Reviews – Review & Excerpt

Evermore Books – Excerpt

Lynn’s Romance Enthusiasm – Excerpt

August 30th

All about reading – Review & Excerpt

Fire and Ice Book Reviews – Excerpt

GhostPepperBabes/ Pimpers’ Dungeon – Excerpt

August 31st

Becky on Books – Review & Excerpt

Cathy Reads Books – Review

Devilishly Delicious Book Reviews – Excerpt

September 1st

Books are love – Review & Excerpt

Brittany’s Book Blog – Excerpt

NightWolf Book Blog – Excerpt

September 2nd

Blushing babes are up all night – Review & Excerpt

Em Jay Reads – Review & Excerpt

Jax’s Book Magic – Excerpt

Review: Shattered Silence by Marta Perry + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Shattered Silence by Marta Perry + GiveawayShattered Silence by Marta Perry
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: romantic suspense
Series: Echo Falls #3
Pages: 384
Published by HQN Books on July 31, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A woman on the run seeks sanctuary in a peaceful Pennsylvania Dutch community--and finds a protector in the most unlikely of men...One moment Rachel Hartline is secure in her career and community. The next, she's in the wrong place at the wrong time--watching her ex-husband commit a crime that puts her in unfathomable danger. Fear and hurt send her home to an Amish farm and the family she's always trusted. But a private investigator is close behind--and he may be a threat to her in more ways than one...Cold, calculating Clint Mordan isn't convinced Rachel is as innocent in her ex-husband's schemes as she claims, but when her ex's enemies target Rachel, Clint is driven to keep her safe. Maybe the terror in her beautiful eyes and the target on her back aren't an act. But as his feelings toward her deepen, Clint realizes he's the only one who can keep Rachel alive in a game where only the killer knows the stakes.

My Review:

This story opens with Rachel Hartline trying to get her ex-husband to sign off on the documents to put the house they still jointly own on the market. He’s promised to sign off, but he’s made plenty of promises throughout their marriage, and seems to have kept very few of them.

But then, as Rachel tells herself frequently throughout the story, addicts lie. And her husband is addicted to gambling. He’s also always expected her to believe him and cover for him, so when she finds him in his boss’ office copying files from his boss’ computer, he expects her to believe him and cover for him one more time.

And he still doesn’t sign the damn papers. But he does leave her holding the bag, so to speak, when his theft is discovered and everyone wants to retrieve the documents he copied – especially his ex-friend and extremely antisocial boss.

That’s where Clint Mordan comes in. Said boss has hired his private investigations firm to discover the stolen documents – and Rachel is the first and best suspect. If not for the theft itself, then certainly for helping out her ex. She seems strangely protective of the man – more than seems logical to the initially skeptical private investigator. Most ex-wives wouldn’t piss on their ex-husbands if the men were on fire, so Rachel’s reluctance to cooperate seems suspicious.

At least until her house is broken into and she’s attacked. Whatever is going on, someone seems determined to get something out of Rachel that she doesn’t have – and not just Clint.

But in the process of following Rachel from Philadelphia to her grandparents’ home in the tiny Amish community of Echo Falls, Clint figures out that whatever loyalty Rachel might still feel, it doesn’t including lying or covering up for her ex-husband.

And while Clint may indeed be paranoid, there is certainly someone out to get Rachel. And it isn’t her ex.

The longer the case goes on, the more that Clint and his partner realize that their client is keeping them in the dark. And the more protective of Rachel Clint becomes. And the more she trusts him, in spite of her fairly awful track record with trusting men.

But can either of them trust the feelings that have arisen in the midst of so much terror?

Escape Rating B+: I seem fated to read the final book in one of Marta Perry’s trilogies without having read the first books first. And to those books turning out to be the right book at the right time each time.

I was interested in Shattered Silence because of its ties to the Pennsylvania Dutch community without being fully set in that world. My husband grew up English in and around Lancaster Pennsylvania, so the Amish background always piques my interest. This story felt like it did a particularly good job of opening a window into that world without pretending to tell a story that is part of it. The times that I’ve read Amish-set books out loud to him he usually finds the descriptions pretty laughable, but that wasn’t the case here.

Just as I read and enjoyed How Secrets Die without having read the first two books in the House of Secrets trilogy, I read and enjoyed Shattered Silence without having read the first two books in the Echo Falls trilogy. In this case, the series seems rather loosely connected, sharing Echo Falls as a location without sharing other elements of the stories.

Shattered Silence turned out to be great romantic suspense. The danger reaches out and grabs the reader from the very beginning, with an exasperated Rachel discovering her ex in the middle of something highly questionable, and moving on from there as Rachel is forced to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.

I also liked the way that while she ended up in trouble over and over, she did not come off as too stupid to live as is so often in the case in “heroine in jeopardy” type romantic suspense. The mess is not her doing, and the mistakes she makes seem realistic. She lets her guard down repeatedly, but only when she thinks she’s in a safe place or that the danger seems over.

The interlude at grandparents’ farm provided a marvelous break in the tension while showing more interesting facets of all the characters. That she and Clint turn to each other in the midst of all of the drama, but also feel reluctant to trust and worried that the heightened tension of the situation is causing them to act out of characters felt right.

The resolution to the mystery felt right, as did their earning of their HEA. And while Rachel bore part of the responsibility for ending up in that final confrontation, she was equally responsible for helping to rescue herself. And that’s the kind of HEA I always love!

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

I am giving away a paperback copy of Shattered Silence to one lucky US/Canadian commenter on this tour!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.