This is part of a series.
The second installment is due out September 2020.
Jane is the new chief of police, but not everyone is congratulating
her on the position. She also has a
journalist following her around filming her for a documentary. While she isn’t happy about it, she doesn’t
have a choice, and she needs to focus on the murders occurring in her tiny
town.
Reid isn’t just making a documentary. He’s there with his son to check into
Jane. He is holding on to some painful
secrets, and they’re all going to catch up to him in Pelican Harbor.
What makes this a 3-star review for me is the convolution
and the ending. The plot had too many
things going on. When I read, “I know it
seems convoluted,” I almost laughed out loud.
It was like the character was saying what I’d been thinking for so
long. There were multiple times I’d come across an element I’d forgotten, or it took me a moment to remember a certain
character.
The other disappointment was the romance. The ending was such a letdown. If you want a continuation of Reid and Jane’s
romance, you have to get book 2. I’m not
used to this kind of cliffhanger from the author, and I didn’t like it. Also, it didn’t make sense for Jane to have
trust issues for the whole book and not spare a single moment considering
someone else having the same issues. I didn’t
expect instant forgiveness, but leaving the relationship on a cliffhanger was
just weird and unsatisfying.
A couple things bothered me but didn’t affect my overall
review score. The first is the horn
tooting at the beginning. How much is
too much these days? I feel like 2% of
the total book is too much. For goodness
sake, there’s at least 4 quotes FROM THE SAME PERSON! Does anyone even read those? I don’t.
I just happened to catch a familiar name more than once and went back to
see what the deal was.
The other thing is the attention to detail. For example, if you’re going to mention Dairy
Queen’s Peanut Buster Parfait, at least know what it is. There isn’t any hot chocolate or caramel in
the PBP. A simple Google search will
tell you that there are 3 ingredients: hot fudge, peanuts and soft serve. That’s it.
Maybe that mistake was caught before the final print, but it was
incredibly disappointing after some of the well-researched novels I’ve read
recently.
Overall, it’s not a bad book, it just wasn’t what I was
expecting. It seemed unnecessarily
complicated while not giving me enough at the same time. Even the villain’s motivations felt strange. I’ve enjoyed so many of Coble’s books in the
past, but this one was a miss for me.
*I received a copy of this book from Thomas Nelson through
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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