Monday, December 6, 2010

Kiss Me, Kill Me

Kiss Me, Kill Me by Maggie Shayne

She’s protected him since the day he was born. Since the day the lie began.

A longago act of kindness to a desperate woman changed Dr. Carrie Overton’s life forever. Before disappearing, the grateful stranger had given Carrie her newborn son. When the woman is murdered, the secret becomes Carrie’s alone.

She has kept both it and her son, Sam, safe for sixteen years. But now a friend of Sam’s has gone missing. The police believe he’s a runaway—until he’s found dead. Then another teen disappears, and talk turns to that longago murder.

Newcomer Gabriel Cain is asking too many questions, befriending Sam, getting too close. Carrie distrusts him even as she finds herself falling for him. But Gabriel has secrets too…

Is it time for the lying to end?
--Kiss Me, Kill Me by Maggie Shayne, Copyright ©2010 by Margaret Benson, published by Mira Books

My Review

Welcome back to Shadow Falls where sixteen years ago, with her infant son Sam, Dr. Carrie Overton settled down to begin her medical practice. Today, she’s a long-standing respected member of the medical profession and the community, Sam is a star on the high school soccer team and Sam’s best friend Kyle has gone missing.

Search teams are assembled, comprising mostly of the town inhabitants, but several seasonal tourists give their time to help find the teen, including Gabriel Cain, itinerant songwriter and Ambrose Arthur Peck, CEO of a Milwaukee investment firm. Both men are attracted to Carrie and while Ambrose is the type she usually goes for—the nerdy, serious type—her eye keeps wandering back to Gabe with his guitar, pony tail and psychedelic 1960’s VW Bus.

When Kyle’s body is found, Sam has a hard time dealing with the loss of his best friend. The two of them and Sam’s girlfriend, Sadie, practically grew up together. Carrie tries to help Sam cope, but it’s Gabe, not Carrie, that seems to get through to the teen with his calm, take-life-as-it-happens philosophy. Carrie may not agree with him, but if it helps Sam, she’s willing to go along with it.

Gabe is a mystery to her, but she finds herself growing more and more attracted to him as the days go on. But she needs to be careful, more careful now than she’s ever been. Some of the new people in town have been drawn to Shadow Falls because of the mysteries that had been uncovered in the past few weeks, and the still unsolved mystery of what happened to Olivia Dupree’s missing baby, known only as Baby Doe. Carrie’s the only one in town that knows the answer to that mystery, and she’s not telling anyone.

When Sadie goes missing, Carrie is forced to confront her fears and must figure out a way to carefully unleash the secret she’s been hiding for sixteen years. Because whether Sadie is found dead or alive, she alone knows who will be next on the kidnapper’s list: Sam.

I have to admit, I had a hard time writing this review because there are so many layers to this story, so many intertwining story lines that tie up the Shadow Falls trilogy that I was afraid to give anything critical away or make the review so long you wouldn’t bother to read the book because I would have told the entire story in the review! I strongly encourage anyone interested in romantic suspense to read these stories. Maggie Shayne is an excellent author who has woven together a terrific trilogy of memorable characters and intriguing story lines that will have you wishing for more. She joins my rank of new authors I’ve come to love thanks to this year-long experiment and I’m sure I’ll read more of her work next year.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

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