Lisa Gardner Follow

This snagged me from the start. I was intrigued by the death row inmate wanting to find her sister before she met her end. Through it all, I questioned everything with a huge grain of salt because I love a twist and I love looking and finding them along the way. And holy heck, did I ever get thrown for a loop with this story! More than once! And I loved every moment of it.

This is my first Frankie Elkin book and she surprised me. She is real, relatable, and definitely has flaws. Her past is layered with pain, grief, and struggles of which she’s failed but eventually found her way to the top, although it continues to be a daily battle. I liked her very much.

While this book did lag through the middle a bit, I leniently took the island details along with the crabs and conservationism, and enjoyed them for the invitation into another world than where I live. Unfortunately, I found myself setting the book aside during this time. However, once things took a turn and started to heat up again, things got crazy! And then I couldn’t force myself to put it down.

I found that this book could be read as a stand alone without feeling the loss of the previous books.

The theme for this book is that no one can escape their past. The death of her husband haunts the investigator, Tessa. Libby and Justin are trying to avoid the mistakes that their parents made. No matter how much money you have, it can’t solve all your problems, only mask them for awhile.

The beginning of the book was tough to get through due to the slow, mournful pacing. Methodical pacing is one thing that I dislike in the suspense genre, and it is used full force in this book. This pacing is somewhat a byproduct of the other item that frustrates me in this book. No one is happy. You either have a traumatic history, secrets that you want to keep at all costs, or are a career-climbing automaton. Of the main cast, Wyatt Foster seems to be the most put together, but even he has some unhappy memories in the closet.

Fortunately, the latter half of the book makes up for the short-comings of the beginning. The investigative teams begin to thaw out around each other, and emphasis turns to the kidnapping and wrangling the multitude of suspects. The book does an outstanding job of keeping you guessing about who is the one behind the crime.

While one of my early guesses ended up being correct, the book was a great ride once it picked up momentum. If you like suspense novels, this one is worth checking out.