Synopsis (via GR)

Their desperate secret. Her desperate search. A shattering truth exposed.

Caroline Corbett wants nothing to do with her father, Hoff, a man who abandoned her as a young girl and then vanished from her life almost thirty years ago. But when her beloved aunt expresses a dying wish to see him once more, Caroline, despite her failing marriage and other personal troubles, drops everything to look for him.

Harris Fenton found the father figure he’d dreamed of when he turned eight and his mother married Hoff—but his disappearance four years later left Harris with scars he carries even now that he is a father himself. While he has a beautiful family and a great job, he’s hiding a shameful secret and a nightmare from his childhood.

Caroline’s search for Hoff soon uncovers a host of disturbing clues and draws a threat of violence. Her mind churns with memories of her troubled history, while Harris is losing the battle against his own demons. But for both of them, dredging up the past will be dangerous, and confronting the truth could prove life shattering.

My Thoughts

I am a HUGE fan of this author, having read the majority of her books so when she contacted me to see if I would like to read an eARC of her newest novel, the answer was an overwhelming YES!!!!!! And I will admit I also did a happy dance!!

As the synopsis states, Caroline Corbett sets out on a mission to find her father that she hasn’t had a relationship with for close to 30 years. The reason being is because his sister, her aunt Lanie who helped raised her wants to see her brother one last time before she passes and time is running out.

However, during her search, Caroline doesn’t realize that she has opened a Pandora’s Box on many fronts and there are some people who want to stop her from pursuing her search (sorry for being vague but don’t want to even let one smidgen of a spoiler to slip through).

Lies, betrayals, love, tenacity, fraud, bribery, murder, trust, bribery, inner demons, family, and a promise that spiraled out of control. And this reader felt each and every emotion that the characters felt.

Without giving anything else away, Ms. Sissel weaves and interweaves storylines that had me trying to guess how all the characters were connected. A writing style that is in all her books and I have yet to figure one out.

Her writing is fluid and descriptive, which allowed me to create such vivid imagery in my mind. Characters that are flawed but relatable. The story had me trying to read faster because I wanted to see how it all came together, but then, on the other hand, I didn’t want the story to end because I was invested in all of the characters. The suspense was taut throughout.

If you haven’t read one of her books, TRUST ME, you are missing out!

And like I say with every book that I read by this amazing author, I now have to try, to patiently wait for her next novel, which is always the negative after finishing one of her books. And in the meantime, I will ponder how this phenomenally talented author writes one book after another that is truly captivating.

Check out my reviews for her previous novels,

THE NINTH STEP , THE VOLUNTEER, EVIDENCE OF LIFE, SAFE KEEPING, CROOKED LITTLE LIES, FAULTLINES,THE LAST INNOCENT HOUR, THE TRUTH WE BURY, and WHAT LIES BELOW,

Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

REVIEW DISCLAIMER

This blog was founded on the premise to write honest reviews, to the best of my ability, no matter who from, where from and/or how the book was obtained, and will continue to do so, even if it is through PICT or PBP.

I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.

I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Mailbox Monday

Tuesday:
THE NANNY by Gilly Macmillan ~ eBook from Harper Collins via NetGalley
Saturday:
THIS SIDE OF WATER by Maureen Pilkington ~ TPB from Author via win from Elizabeth Silver’s Reviews

This year, one of the Challenges I signed up for is Blog All About It, hosted by The Herd Presents. The guideline is basically a blogging prompt challenge. Each month there’s a different prompt that you can interpret as you’d like then create a blog post around it. The 2019 list of prompts can be seen here on my Challenge Page. I will be posting for this Challenge on the 2nd Saturday of each month.

This month’s prompt is: BLOOM

It’s been a very rainy and dreary Spring here in RI and flowers are a bit late in blooming. I have been waiting patiently to get outside, clean up my flower beds and plant. So no actual pictures of my gardens.

I have perennials planted along a wall on one side of our backyard and in May add some annuals. In a corner of our backyard, I have a statue of the Blessed Virgin with an angel on each side, which I also plant annuals. In another corner, we have a hydrangea bush, with perennials and again, will add annuals for more color. My favorite blooms in this area are the Star Gazer Lilys. The fragrance is beautiful but the actual flowers do not last long.

I also have 4 large pots located in each corner of where our pool is that I plant annuals, usually Impatiens.

Wednesday of this week, the sun finally made an appearance, so I took advantage of the day and planted these seeds and fingers crossed, they will be blooming in a few weeks.

What I am really hoping that will bloom, which I had never seen before, was a seed paper that includes multiple wildflower blends in the shape of a butterfly. Recently, my son’s girlfriend’s Mom passed away and after the funeral, guests were given these packets in her memory.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this year I have a backyard full of color and beautiful blooms.

Synopsis:

Tough-as-nails Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong returns in this electrifying ninth installment of the series, by USA Today bestselling author Jon Land

1994: Texas Ranger Jim Strong investigates a mass murder on a dusty freight train linked to a mysterious, missing cargo for which no record exists.

The Present: His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds herself on the trail of that same cargo when skeletal remains are found near an excavation site in the Texas desert. She’s also dealing with the aftermath of a massacre that claimed the lives of all the workers at a private intelligence company on her watch.

These two cases are connected by a long buried secret, one that men have killed and died to protect. Caitlin and her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters must prove themselves to be as strong as steel to overcome a bloody tide that has been rising for centuries.

**Read my review HERE and enter the giveaway**

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller
Published by: Forge Books
Publication Date: April 23rd 2019
Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 0765384671 (ISBN13: 9780765384676)
Series: Caitlin Strong #10
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Author Bio:

Jon Land is the award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of 50 books, including ten titles in the critically acclaimed Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong series, the last of which, STRONG TO THE BONE, won both the 2017 American Book Fest and 2018 International Book Award for Best Mystery. The next title in the series, STRONG AS STEEL, will be published in April. MANUSCRIPT FOR marked his second effort writing as Jessica Fletcher for the MURDER, SHE WROTE series, and he has also teamed with Heather Graham for a new sci-fi series starting with THE RISING. He is a 1979 graduate of Brown University, lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

She was inspired to follow the Strong family tradition by becoming a Texas Ranger, only after she was sexually assaulted as a college student and the man who did it was never caught.

Her legendary father and grandfather, Jim and Earl Strong, worked on only a single case together as Texas Rangers, tracking killers who were after the legendary lost treasure of the pirate Jean Lafitte who really did base his operations off Texas’ Galveston Island, as told in STRONG VENGEANCE.

In the next book in the series, STRONG FROM THE HEART, she develops an addiction to opioids she’s being treated with for something that happens at the end of STRONG AS STEEL.

She actually left the Rangers for a time after tracking down and executing the cartel soldiers who killed her Texas Ranger partner Charlie Banks.

She was married for a brief stretch and her husband was thought to have died while serving as a contractor in Iraq. But the first book in the series, STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE, brings him back into her life as an amnesiac with no memory of her or what happened to him. This proved to tbe the impetus for her return to the Rangers.

Her grandfather taught her how to shoot at the age of six or seven and she could handle the likes of a 1911 Springfield model .45 by the time she was nine when she won her first shooting competition.

At the age of four, she witnessed the murder of her mother by drug mules but has no memory of that to this day, though she believes a lot of her more violent tendencies, and gunfighter mentality, stem from that day.

Caitlin also believes that incident is to blame for the fact that she never married or had children of her own. But it also explains her attachment to the sons of her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters for whom she becomes a surrogate mother.

When she was thirteen she witnessed her father gunning down a villain who’d escaped the law. Years later, as told in STRONG AT THE BREAK, she comes up against the man’s son, who also bore witness to Caitlin’s father Jim Strong killing his father.

Caitlin’s giant, deadly protector and guardian angel Guillermo Paz, the former head of the Venezuelan Secret Police, was actually hired to kill her in STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE. But she turned the tables in classic Caitlin form.

Caitlin is a quarter Mexican, thanks to an affair her grandfather, and fellow Texas Ranger, Earl Strong had with a woman he rescued from an early form of human trafficking in 1934 Texas.

Staying on the family theme, Caitlin also has a half-sister thanks to an affair her father Jim Strong had with a Mexican crime boss whose life he saved in STRONG AS STEEL, the most recent, and just released, book in the series

Catch Up With Our Jon Land at:
jonlandbooks.com, Goodreads, Twitter @jondland, & Facebook!

Read an excerpt:

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Enter To Win!:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Jon Land. There will be 1 winner of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card. The giveaway begins on April 22, 2019 and runs through May 24, 2019. Void where prohibited.

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**Stop by tomorrow for a Guest Post by Jon Land**

Synopsis (via PICT)

Tough-as-nails Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong returns in this electrifying ninth installment of the series, by USA Today bestselling author Jon Land 1994: Texas Ranger Jim Strong investigates a mass murder on a dusty freight train linked to a mysterious, missing cargo for which no record exists. The Present: His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds herself on the trail of that same cargo when skeletal remains are found near an excavation site in the Texas desert. She’s also dealing with the aftermath of a massacre that claimed the lives of all the workers at a private intelligence company on her watch. These two cases are connected by a long buried secret, one that men have killed and died to protect. Caitlin and her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters must prove themselves to be as strong as steel to overcome a bloody tide that has been rising for centuries.

My Thoughts

Hold on to your hats, bad ass Caitlin Strong, Texas Ranger, is taking the reader on another wild ride!!! Twenty-five years ago, Caitin’s father, Jim Strong, was on a case that wasn’t resolved and now Caitlin finds herself dealing with the same case. Some people want what was buried 25 years ago, which has eluded them, but Caitlin has to figure out who these people are and what are in the buried ossuaries. And bodies are also piling up. This book is the 10th book in this series but reads as a stand alone. What I enjoy in this series is the profound and immense research that goes into the books interweaving historical facts into the story. It is not only a thrilling read but I always learn new facts. For me, this was a page turner, trying to keep up with the action and to see what really was in those ossuaries. The action is nonstop! I highly recommend that you pick up a copy and I guarantee you will be hooked! Check out my reviews for previous books in this series: Strong To The Bone, Strong Cold Dead Purchase Links:Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Jon Land. There will be 1 winner of a $20. Amazon GC. The giveaway begins on April 22, 2019 and runs through May 24, 2019.

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REVIEW DISCLAIMER

This blog was founded on the premise to write honest reviews, to the best of my ability, no matter who from, where from and/or how the book was obtained, and will continue to do so, even if it is through PICT or PBP.

I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.

I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Synopsis (via GR)

A missing child sets the lives of three women on a collision course in this powerful and compelling novel by USA Today bestselling author Bette Lee Crosby.

1971.

When a music festival rolls through the sleepy town of Hesterville, Georgia, the Dixon family’s lives are forever changed. On the final night, a storm muffles the sound of the blaring music, and Rachel tucks her baby into bed before falling into a deep sleep. So deep, she doesn’t hear the kitchen door opening. When she and her husband wake up in the morning, the crib is empty. Emily is gone.

Vicki Robart is one of the thousands at the festival, but she’s not feeling the music. She’s feeling the emptiness over the loss of her own baby several months before. When she leaves the festival and is faced with an opportunity to fill that void, she is driven to an act of desperation that will forever bind the lives of three women.

When the truth of what actually happened that fateful night is finally exposed, shattering the lives they’ve built, will they be able to pick up the pieces to put their families back together again?

My Thoughts

How can this be? Where have I been? Thinking under a rock since this is the first book that I read by this author. I am a member of multiple Facebook book groups and according to so many positive comments about her books, this is her 21st book, and many rave reviews for this book, which was the reason I chose to read it.

As the synopsis states the final day of a music festival, Emily Dixon, 6 months old, was kidnapped, taken from her crib while her parents slept. Vicki Robart, attended the festival, but due to drugs and depression of losing her own child, a stillborn, months before, she believes Emily is her Lara.

Emily’s parents, Rachel and George, never gave up hope that someday she would be returned to them but as each year passed that possibility seemed it was not to be. Every day, the “what ifs” were torturous to this couple.

In the beginning, Rachel is so broken that getting up each day is a feat in itself. Her mother-in-law, Helen a bitter lady due to the loss of her own husband and her son getting married and leaving their home, suddenly has a change of heart, and becomes a loving and influential person in Rachel’s life.

The characters were lifelike to the point that I felt that I was also a participant in their lives. The story and writing style flowed so smoothly that I felt I was transported to Hesterville, GA. I felt every emotion of the characters, the profound grief of losing a child, the anger, grief, despair, sadness, guilt, despondency Most of all, the love of a mother and the hope that Emily was being loved by the person who took her. And what surprised me was the emotions I felt towards the kidnapper (vague to not include spoiler).

Do wishes come true? What about fate? Is there anything stronger than a mother’s love? And would one be able to forgive after such a horrific act?

Do I recommend this book? I say that you HAVE and NEED to read this book!!! But have a box or 2 of tissues nearby!

And I have a lot of Bette Lee Crosby reading to do!!!!!!

Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

REVIEW DISCLAIMER

This blog was founded on the premise to write honest reviews, to the best of my ability, no matter who from, where from and/or how the book was obtained, and will continue to do so, even if it is through PICT or PBP.

I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.

I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Mailbox Monday

Monday:
A NEARLY NORMAL FAMILY by Rachel Willson-Broyles ~ ARC TPB from Celadon Books
THE LAST WIDOW by Karin Slaughter ~ eBook from Harper Collins via NetGalley
LADY IN THE LAKE by Laura Lippman ~ eBook from William Morrow via NetGalley
GOOD GIRLS LIE by J.T. Ellison ~ eBook from Mira Books via NetGalley
Tuesday:
WHISPER NETWORK by Chandler Baker ~ ARC TPB from Flatiron Books
THE BODY IN THE WAKE by Katherine Hall Page ~ HC from William Morrow
Wednesday:
TURN OF THE KEY by Ruth Ware ~ eBook from Gallery Books via NetGalley
Thursday:
THE CHESTNUT MAN by Søren Sveistrup ~ ARC TPB from Harper Collins
THIN AIR by Lisa Gray ~ eBook via Prime

Hosted by McGruffy’s Reader and 15 and Meowing

This week’s Fill-Ins:

1. 13 years ago, I __________________.
2. By this time next year, I hope to ________________________.
3. One word that describes me is _________.
4. If my life were a book or movie, it would be in the _________ genre.

My answers:

1. 13 years ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was or that there was a book community online.

2. By this time next year, I hope to make a bigger dent in my TBR books.

3. One word that describes me is compassionate. IMO, a trait that made me choose to go into nursing.

4. If my life were a book or movie, it would be in the suspense/thriller genre.