Book Review: Tell No Lies by Allison Brennan

 

                                                               Kindle Edition, 384 pages
                                                 Published March 30th 2021 by MIRA

                                                                     Buy from Amazon

The unsolved murder of a young activist leads to the discovery of much darker crimes in New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan’s latest compelling thriller to feaure the young, edgy detective Kara Quinn and the loner FBI agent Matt Costa. This time they work to uncover possible ties to a high-stakes cartel in the Southwest desert.

Something mysterious is killing the wildlife in the mountains just south of Tucson. When a college intern turned activist sets out to collect her own evidence, she, too, ends up dead. Local law enforcement is slow to get involved. That’s when the mobile FBI unit goes undercover to infiltrate the town and its copper refinery in search of possible leads.

Quinn and Costa find themselves scouring the desolate landscape, which keeps revealing clues to something much darker—greed, child trafficking and more death. As the body count adds up, it’s clear they have stumbled onto much more than they bargained for. Now they must figure out who is at the heart of this mayhem and stop them before more innocent lives are lost.

                                                          MY REVIEW:

Tell No Lies by Allison Brennan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Emma Perez was out with her boyfriend trying to figure out what was killing the birds, she was killed. Now the investigation is opening up a whole set of worms.
Local law enforcement is slow to get involved. That’s when the mobile FBI unit goes undercover to infiltrate the town and its copper refinery in search of possible leads.
Quinn and Costa find themselves scouring the desolate landscape, which keeps revealing clues to something much darker—greed, child trafficking and more death.
I love Kara Quinn, she is a LAPD detective helping the FBI. Special Agent Mathias Costa of the FBI is now her boss and they have a on again off again relationship. Kara goes undercover as a bartender to find out what is going on in town.
When one of the families that is being investigated also owns the business in town. The owner's son takes a liking to Kara, but is he who she thinks he is. Maybe he is hiding something.
I borrowed the kindle book from the library so that I could continue on with this series.

View all my reviews

@HarlequinBooks

                                                             Allison Brennan



Born in Redwood City, CA, The United States
September 29
Website
http://www.allisonbrennan.com/
Twitter
Allison_Brennan
Genre
Suspense, Thriller, Mystery
Influences
Stephen King, Lisa Gardner ...more

URL
https://www.goodreads.com/abwrites



New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Allison Brennan believes that life is too short to be bored, so she had five children and writes three books a year.

40 books and numerous short stories later, Allison relocated in 2019 from Northern California to Arizona with her husband and two youngest children.

She currently writes the Lucy Kincaid series and the Quinn & Costa series. Next up is THE WRONG VICTIM on 4/26/22 where Detective Kara Quinn & FBI Agent Matt Costa travel to the San Juan Islands to investigate a charter boat explosion that left nine dead. Kirkus Reviews says Kara Quinn is "A strong and damaged protagonist as compelling as Lisbeth Salander."

RT Book Reviews calls Allison “a master of suspense” and her books “haunting,” “mesmerizing,” “pulse-pounding” and “emotionally complex.” She's been nominated for many awards, and is a three time winner of the Reviewer's Choice award winner for RT Book Reviews as well as the Daphne du Maurier award. Most recently, she was nominated for Best Paperback Original by International Thriller Writers.

You can reach Allison through Goodreads or through her website.

Blog Tour: Crimson Summer by Heather Graham

 

                                                             CRIMSON SUMMER
                                                           Author: Heather Graham
                                                              ISBN: 9780778311829
                                                      Publication Date: April 5, 2022

                                                           Publisher: MIRA Books

Buy Links:
BookShop.org
Harlequin
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Books-A-Million
Powell’s

Book Summary:


From New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham, suspense following agents from the FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement as they investigate a series of murders linked to conspiracy theorists and doomsday cults.


Just when FDLE agent Amy Larson thought she'd wrapped up her most chilling case, she was delivered a red toy horse--a not-so-subtle taunt from a Doomsday cult that she and FBI agent Hunter Forrest hoped they'd taken down. A apparent turf war in Seminole territory in North Florida is the scene of a bloody massacre, and the blame seems to lie with drug cartels out of South America. The trail will take the pair on a cross-country hunt, and deep into a world of conspiracy theories, greed and privilege, where a powerful, hidden group is trying to create civil unrest through violence.

                                               MY REVIEW:

Crimson Summer by Heather Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A tourist group stumbles upon a massacre in the Everglades. FDLE special agent Amy Larson discovers a small horse figurine amid the bloody aftermath. The toy is the calling card of the apocalypse cult that Amy and her partner, FBI special agent Hunter Forrest, have been investigating.
As tensions between rival gangs rise, so does the body count, and Amy and Hunter’s investigation leads them to a violent, far-right extremist group who are in no hurry to quell the civil unrest. With a deadly puppet master working to silence their every lead, it’s a race against the clock to figure out who’s been pulling the strings.
They question al the tourists and then it looks like the tourists lives are at stake as it seems they may know something. As the investigation goes on I began to wonder myself just who is telling the truth, who is lying, and who really doesn't know anything,
As the investigation leads them to another murder in NY city they are still trying to see how it ties into the Everglades murders.
I like how Amy and Hunter work together but also how they can set aside what happened by the end of the day to be together as real partners and to be able to eat and sleep until the next day,
Thank you to Mira(Harper Collins) and NetGalley for the book to review.


View all my reviews

Author Bio:


New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Heather Graham has written more than a hundred novels. She's a winner of the RWA's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Thriller Writers' Silver Bullet. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America. For more information, check out her website, TheOriginalHeatherGraham.com, or find Heather on Facebook.

Social Links:
Author Website
Twitter: @HeatherGraham
Instagram: @TheOriginalHeatherGraham
Facebook: @HeatherGrahamAuthor
Goodreads

Book Review: Paper Gods by Goldie Taylor

 I read this book over a year ago and never got my review up. Trying to catch up on books I read and didn't review.

Paperback, 336 pages
Published June 29th 2021 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published October 23rd 2018)

Buy on Amazon

"From buttermilk fried okra to bibles and bullets, the story comes out the gate moving and never lets up.” —Eric Jerome Dickey, New York Times bestselling author of A Wanted Woman

Now in paperback—The mayor of Atlanta and a washed-up reporter investigate a series of assassinations, and uncover a conspiracy that reaches into the heart of the city's political machine.

Mayor Victoria Dobbs Overstreet is a Harvard-trained attorney and Spelman alum, married to a celebrated heart surgeon, mother to beautiful twin girls, and a political genius. When her mentor, ally, and friend Congressman Ezra Hawkins is gunned down in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Victoria finds a strange piece of origami–a “paper god”–tucked inside his Bible. These paper gods turn up again and again, always after someone is killed. Someone is terrorizing those who are close to Mayor Dobbs, and she can't shake the feeling that the killer is close to her, too.

                                                    MY REVIEW:

Paper Gods: A Novel of Money, Race, and Politics by Goldie Taylor


There was a lot of intrigue and politics going on. I liked the book but just a little political for me.
Atlanta Mayor Victoria Dobbs Overstreet is a Harvard-trained attorney and Spelman alum, married to a celebrated heart surgeon, mother to beautiful twin girls, and a political genius.
People start dying and it loos like not by accident. Newspaperman Hampton Bridges is in a suspicious car accident that leaves him partially paralyzed. Congressman Ezra Hawkins is assassinated in his church. Both are connected to the Mayor.
Victoria finds a strange piece of origami–a “paper god”–tucked inside Ezra's Bible and they show up more in the book.
Thank you to St. Martin's for the book to review.

View all my reviews

                                                                      Goldie Taylor

@StMartinsPress

Blog Tour: The Family Holiday by Shalini Boland

 

Buy Link:

Amazon: https://geni.us/B09Q9BFP6Lsocial

Audio:

UK: zpr.io/KVRFJ2u8S5FP
US: zpr.io/QZMg83H4H9F7

Two families. One house swap. A vacation to die for.

The white-washed Italian villa is perfect. I thought it might feel odd, living in a stranger’s house for the summer, but as my husband and children swim in the infinity pool, I start to relax. And then, in the back of a wardrobe, I find a photograph that shatters everything…

Sparkling green eyes, square jaw, lopsided smile. A young man with his arm around a beautiful woman. The picture is old and faded but I’d recognise him anywhere. The man is my husband.

But we’ve never met the family we’ve swapped homes with and my husband swears it isn’t him in the photo. He’s lying. We argue on the balcony with the sun setting behind us and I storm out.

When I finally calm down enough to go back to the villa to confront him, I find him sprawled across the veranda… dead.

Why would someone kill my husband? Am I in danger? And how well did I really know the man I married?

MY REVIEW:

The Family Holiday by Shalini Boland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two families. One house swap. A vacation to die for.
Niall mentions a vacation to Beth and they decide to swap houses with the Masons, Amber and Renzo.. Niall and Beth are from the uk, the Masons from Italy.
I found from the very beginning that Niall was a selfish asshole and I did not like him at all and that Beth needed to get a backbone.
I also found Amber to be quite the bitch and I liked Renzo.
Beth and Niall's boys seemed to be more selfish than most teenage boys as well but I seemed to like Amber's and Renzo's children.
Then you add in Beth's nosy neighbor and the waitress that Beth and Nialll met and that leaves us wondering what is really going on. As I kept reading I was wondering what part they played in all of what was going on.
Beth finds a photo of Niall's and Amber in a pocket of a coat and confronts Niall but she doesn't believe what he is saying.
Later that night Beth finds Niall dead as he had fallen off the balcony and she realizes that their vacation is really over.
Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for the book to review.

View all my reviews

Shalini lives in Dorset, England with her husband, two children and Jess, their cheeky terrier cross. Before kids, she was signed to Universal Music Publishing as a singer songwriter, but now she spends her days writing suspense thrillers (in between school runs and hanging out endless baskets of laundry).

https://www.instagram.com/shaboland/

https://twitter.com/ShaliniBoland