Deadly Messages
Rebecca GraceRomantic suspense
Available from The Wild Rose Press
ISBN: 1-60154-642-4
February 2010
| Former broadcast journalist Rebecca Grace spins a believable tale about vivacious television news producer Connie Romero and her reluctant Canadian beau, Mitch Weldon. When a weekend getaway among sisters ends in tragedy, Connie decides to put her investigative journalism skills to use and find out exactly what was going on in her sister's life that would have caused it to be cut violently short. Enter her contact, Mitch Weldon, a special investigator who thinks Connie would be better off leaving the investigation to the professionals. Stubborn Connie refuses to let the cops pin the murder on the most likely suspect and when she begins to dig into her sister's life, she finds that she didn't really know her sister as well as she thought she did at all.
I thoroughly enjoyed all the scenes in this book between Connie and Mitch as well as the level of casual detail describing the area around Vancouver and Seattle. I would not be surprised to learn that Ms. Grace had lived in the area. I feel like if I were to travel there, I would be able to find the Romero family home and all of their favorite spots. It's very rare that I truly feel as thought I know a character well enough to guess what they would do in a situation. This is both the strongest and weakest skill of Ms. Grace. Connie was real to the point that when she didn't do what I wanted her to do, I would get irritated with her and put the book down for a while. Another strong point in Ms. Grace's favor is the slow burn between Connie and Mitch. It was refreshing to not have an instant dazzling explosion of fireworks and instead witness a genuine likeness and respect blossom into love. Where Ms. Grace missed a fourth heart with me was any lack of sympathy for the character of Connie's sister, Joy. At one point, I just did not care if they ever found her murderer because I ended up not liking Joy's character at all. It seemed like the passionate fervor Connie kept telling herself she felt for tracking down her sister's killer was a chore, just one more thing on her to-do list, instead of the consuming obsession she seemed to think it was. It became tedious. Add a few trivial technicalities (a TV producer shouldn't have trouble keeping up in a chat room) and Deadly Messages was just a few bytes short. Connie and Mitch working together made a fun and entertaining couple. I wonder if Ms. Grace is considering a series of suspense novels featuring the two?
Overall rating:
Reviewer: Laine Kurt |
