Category Archives: Book Reviews

This is the sixth book in the Kenni Lowry Mystery series. I have enjoyed reading every single one of them and this book right up there as one of my favorites. While I think the story can be read stand-alone, there is so much involved with character and plot building, I highly recommend reading the series in order.

It’s Christmas time and Sheriff Kenni Lowry is trying to wrap things up so she had her boyfriend can head out of town to visit his family for the holidays. Between Kenni’s mother wailing about the first Christmas they will be apart and the threat of the snowstorm of the century, Kenni is trying to stay optimistic about actually getting out of town.
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This is a series that I have read for a while. I find that each book adds to the continuing story and presents and different and unusual whodunnit to solve.

In this story Zoe Chambers, our sleuth, is trying to solve the mystery of a murder at an assisted living facility. Her boyfriend Pete Adams, who is the chief of police, is also concerned as his father is a resident at the facility.

While their investigation coincides, they don’t work side by side. The story follows each of them as they put clues together.

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I’m fairly new to books by Anne Perry but what I have read so far, I have enjoyed. “Dark Tide Rising” is the first in the William Monk series that I have read.

The plot was interesting as well as the characters. The characters are extremely well-rounded but makes me want to go back and read the earlier books to see where they came from to get to this point.

The plot, while interesting and well-written included a “whodunnit” that I found fairly easy to solve. I read a lot of mysteries, so that may be why it proved to be so. The caliber of the writing and the characters more than made up for my guessing the ending so soon.

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This is the first series I have read by Dean Koontz. With each new novel, I find myself drawn more and more to the strong female character, Jane Hawk.

She is fighting against an enemy that is bigger and much more well-funded than she is. Though she is far from by herself. Though it feels that way to her. The truth is, as time goes on, more and more people are becoming aware of a sub-current that is going on in the world. She finds help in unexpected places.

Such is the case as Jane fights against the clock to save her young son from being found and killed (or worse) by the sick society that is trying to take over.

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The the series infers that the books are based on a greenhouse style mystery, the setting is actually a small goat/organic vegetable farm. The trials and tribulations of a small farmer making her way are part of the story and, for me, an important part.

Our farmer/sleuth, Megan, has her hands full when her father and his new wife unexpectedly descend on their small town. At the same time, a spa retreat opens and Megan’s high school sweetheart turns out to be involved with the venture.

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This was a difficult yet ultimately rewarding novel to read. The book is focused on children who have been dramatically abused. There is so much information and science behind what has occurred and what one can expect from these children, that it takes a good portion of the book to describe.

The author has used characters to give this information to the reader. In some cases, it becomes more of a lecture than a story but I can understand why she wanted to provide the information.

Frankly, I was horrified by what I read. I knew that I had suffered abuse within my family when I was a child but after reading this story, I can be thankful that my own abuse was much milder and left less of a shadow on the rest of my life. That is not to diminish any form of abuse. Abuse is just that and it becomes part of what forms you as an individual.

Personally, I would have preferred some of the information in a preface to the book. Either that, or less stories of abuse in a single book – perhaps spread across two or three. That’s a difficult thing to do, so perhaps, the preface would make more sense.

This is also the first book in this series I have read. It could easily be read as a stand-alone book but there are references to other stories that piqued my interest and made me want to go back and read them. My recommendation is to read the stories in order so you can see how the characters have grown and what their shared history is.

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