Grace Blades, a
brilliant, lonely child, lives in a trailer-park with her
underachieving parents until in a drug and alcohol induced rage, they
kill each other. Graces is catapulted into the foster care system
which fits her poorly because of her brains and her penchant for
being alone.
Fast forward twenty
years and Grace is a psychotherapist. Her empathy for people haunted
by tragedy makes her exceptionally successful, but Grace has a dark side. When she slips out of her normal life to seduce a man, she
meets someone from her past. His murder puts Grace on the run trying
to find the killer before she's the next victim.
Grace's early life
makes a good case study. The scenes from her
childhood and adolescence give a picture of why she lives the
way she does and how she has the strength to search for a murderer in
spite of the danger to herself. The story is told in alternating chapters of her early life and the hunt for the murderer. The murder investigation is less
believable than the chapters exploring her life. I found it
uncomfortable to switch back and forth. I barely got involved in her
character development before being dumped back into the chase scene
in the present.
Grace's character is
very well done. I loved Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels and wondered
how he would portray a female character. He does an excellent job.
Grace is a character it's hard to forget. In a bow to his male
character, she mentions Alex a few times as a mentor.
The pace is good, if
you get used to the time switches. I enjoyed the book and recommend
it if you enjoy fleshed out characters and a good mystery.
I reviewed this book
for Net Galley.
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