When one Coast Guard officer is found dead and another goes missing, Coast Guard Investigative Service special agent Finn Walker faces his most dangerous crime yet. His only clues are what little evidence remains aboard the dead officer’s boat, and the direction the clues point to will test Finn and the Guard to their limits.
When investigative reporter–and Finn’s boss’s sister–Gabby Rowley arrives, her unrelenting questions complicate an already volatile situation. Now that she’s back, the tug on Finn’s heart is strong, but with the risks she’s taking for her next big story, he fears she might not live through it.
Thrown together by the heinous crime, Finn and Gabby can’t ignore the sparks or judgments flying between them. But will they be able to see past their preconceptions long enough to track down an elusive killer, or will they become his next mark?
Review
Dani Pettrey has written some of my favorite contemporary mysteries so of course I had to pick up her new one. My thoughts:
What I liked
The use of the Coastguard. Pettrey does her research. I’ve never given much thought to the U.S. Coastguard so it was fascinating to me, as a reader, to learn what all their job entails. I realize this is a novel, but it was very much high action, lots of water, and plenty of nefarious criminals.
Mysteries. There is more than one mystery in this novel and all of them are very layered and complex. They are quite the balls of thread to unravel and you can tell that the author takes her time to craft them. Things also happen very quick. Reading one of Pettrey’s novels is often like watching an episode of NCIS.
Spiritually, the characters pray, realize the importance of accepting God’s grace, and learn to rely on him.
What I didn’t like
Gabby. I’ve never met a female journalist in person. I have, however, met several of them within the confines of fiction. Based off of novels, here is what I have learned about female journalists, they are: abrasive, self-centered, deceptive, they will put themselves and others in danger if it means getting the story, and they don’t care what relationships they have to sacrifice to make things happen. If you can’t tell, I don’t like female main characters who are journalists. I had high hopes Gabby would be different. She wasn’t. I understand that her main goal in the novel was to recognize her own faults. But I was completely turned off by her behavior almost immediately and was therefore unable to connect.
Too much going on. Dani Pettrey almost always starts her novels in medias res. The reader is just dropped there right in the middle of things and relationships. But this one was too much too fast. I read the first three chapters and wondered if I was reading the first book in a series. I had to stop and check Amazon to see if I had missed something. There was so much action and so little character development. This may have worked if the story stayed purely from Gabby and Finn’s point of view. But it didn’t. There were so many characters and I didn’t know who they were (like I knew their names, but not their personalities). I like to see friendships form and relationships develop. Without any kind of background, I found myself largely not caring whose point of view I was reading cause it all felt the same and I was definitely skimming towards the end.
Romantic scale: 7
Overall, not my favorite book by the author. This may be a personal thing, however. I’m a much more character-driven reader than plot-driven and the little character I got was unfortunately, largely unappealing.
**I received a copy from Bethany House via Netgalley. My opinion was not affected in any way.**
remaininhislove 