Category: 4/5

4/5, AUTHOR, B, Book Review, Fiction, Read in 2008

Darkness Peering by Alice Blanchard

Tara
Darkness Peering
by Alice Blanchard
Copyright: 1999
Pages: 316
Rating: 4/5
Read: Jan. 14-16, 2008
Challenge: No challenge; personal read
First Line: Police Chief Nalen Storrow found the dead girl lying faceup in a rust-colored runoff pond on the westernmost corner of Old Mo Heppenheimer’s cow pasture.
A young girl is found strangled in Flowering Dogwood, Maine. The investigation leads to the Police Chief’s son, Billy, as the only suspect. Almost twenty years later, the ex-Police Chief’s daughter, Rachel, now a police officer in Flowering Dogwood, wants to reopen the case. Soon after another young woman goes missing and turns up dead. And once again, Billy is the prime suspect. Will Rachel find that the truth would only hurt her in the end?
I enjoyed this book. I’ve never read anything by Blanchard, but I was thoroughly impressed by her writing. I found myself turning the pages quickly only to realize that at the end the killer came out of left field (with a few subtly laid clues which I of course missed!). I recommend this book to anyone! I really enjoyed it!!
4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, Read in 2008

No Second Chance by Harlan Coben

Tara
No Second Chance
by Harlan Coben

Copyright: 2003
Pages: 420
Rating: 4/5
Read: Jan. 2-3, 2008
Challenge: Numbers Challenge; Celebrating the Author Challenge

First Line: When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter.

Dr. Marc Seidman wakes up in the hospital to find that twelve days earlier his wife, Monica, was shot dead in their home, and their daughter, Tara, is missing. When the ransom note arrives, Marc’s hopes go through the roof. But when the drop goes bad, everything around him spirals out of control. Eighteen months later, another ransom note is delivered. Instead of contacting the police and doing the “right” thing, Marc takes matters into his own hands. With the assistance of his ex-girlfriend, they chase down the clues to Tara’s disappearance, only to realize that there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

This story was well plotted and fast paced. I was sucked in with the first sentence and could barely wait to figure out if Tara was still alive. The revelations at the end are shocking, to say the least. The ending came out of left field to me. This was only the second Co (the first I read years ago) and I thoroughly enjoyed it.