review: stone cold heart by laura griffin

This post contains affiliate links.

When bones are found by rock climbers in a remote area, the Springville police call the Delphi Center for assistance. As a forensic anthropologist, Sara Lockhart is the one who heads up the recovery of the bones while Detective Nolan Hess takes the lead on the criminal investigation. Although the bones are the right gender and age, they are not a match for the missing woman Springville police have been searching for. Soon Sara and Nolan realize there's a serial killer in the area and Sara gets a little too close for comfort.

As one might expect from the 13th novel in the Tracers series from Laura Griffin, there's a lot of suspense as Sara and Nolan work to discover the identity of the serial killer. It's a well laid out plot where every bit is important—there are no unnecessary details here! The romance is a little flat though. Sara and Nolan just didn't seem to click as anything more than investigators, but there they were jumping into bed despite both having reservations. And when they reached what served as the turning point, it just didn't seem like Sara, who was set up as fiercely independent, would be interested in taking that relationship step in that moment.
4/5
Review copy provided by the author.

review: hello, summer by mary kay andrews

This post contains affiliate links.

When Sarah Conley Hawkins (who prefers Conley) learns her new employer has lost all its funding and shut down, she heads home to Silver Bay, FL instead of Washington, D.C. She's a newspaper reporter and no one is hiring despite her skills. As it happens, her grandma is the owner of their hometown weekly newspaper and her sister runs it. While her grandma is thrilled to have Conley home, Grayson is resentful of her younger sister who left for the big city and rarely returned. There's plenty of tension, but then Conley happens across a fatal single-car crash. The fatality happens to be the beloved Representative Symmes Robinette, who just happens to have a scandal in his past, and whose car crash may not have been an accident. Soon Conley is entangled in not only the Robinette story but her own personal dramas.

Hello, Summer contains a bit of filler as well as some inconsistencies regarding ages and dietary habits. Mary Kay Andrews also makes the same mistake that many others do and conflates the generational group Millennial with young person. Both Grayson and Conley make remarks about the generation as though they are not members despite their ages of 36 and 34 placing them firmly in the Millennial group. Hello, Summer also falls short when it comes time to wrap up the mysteries. A few are solved, but other big parts of the plot are left as loose ends. It is a gripping story though with enough twists to keep the pages turning until the end.
4/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, St. Martin's Press.