Description:
Fear prickles her skin. “Noah?” Photos and trinkets from their simple but perfect life together litter the carpet. The coffee table is cracked, blood along its edges. She should be taking in details, but her heart is racing too fast. A strangled cry works its way from Josie’s chest. Where is her husband?
Detective Josie Quinn’s world shatters when she returns home to find her house ransacked, and her husband, Noah, missing. When she kissed him goodbye hours earlier, called to the discovery of a woman’s body at a protest, they were putting the finishing touches to a nursery for their first adopted child. But now the house is empty, Noah’s bloodied handprints trailing the walls.
Every fiber of Josie’s being screams to investigate. But her team warn her to keep her distance as they follow a connection to a recent robbery in Denton. But Josie can’t quiet the voice telling her the handprints Noah left are leading her somewhere, and the trail ends at an upturned box of her long-dead abusive mother’s possessions: faded photos, jewelry, a lock of hair, and a few old newspaper clippings.
Beside herself with worry for Noah, and unexpectedly confronted by the trauma of her past, Josie throws herself into work. The woman’s body found during a demonstration outside a children’s hospital belongs to Gina Phelan, daughter of the powerful and influential Phelan family. Trawling the CCTV is a welcome distraction, but everything changes the moment fingerprints from the knife that wounded Gina match to prints found in Josie’s own home.
Her head spinning as the two cases collide, Josie’s only option is to delve into the life of the monster who terrorized her as a child. The key to everything is hidden in the box of her mother’s mementoes. But is Josie strong enough and fast enough to find it in time? And at what devastating cost to those she loves most?
Oh, Lisa Regan. Just when I think you couldn’t possibly write a book that would rip my heart out any more than the last, you somehow do. I do not know how you keep writing book after amazing book, and yet with each new installment, you blow my mind with your fantastic storytelling again.
Here, Josie returns home after catching a new case involving the murder of Gina Phelan, part of the Phelan Construction family. But when she gets there, she doesn’t find Noah waiting for her. Instead, she finds her home torn apart, blood everywhere, and Noah gone.
Josie is used to being the one solving the crimes, not the one waiting for the police to do their job. Y’all know she can’t turn off her investigative brain with Noah missing and time of the essence. And it soon becomes clear that Josie is going to have to go way back down memory lane to unravel this mystery – all the way back to Lila, the woman who kidnapped Josie and made her life a horror.
I’m so used to Josie and Noah being able to bounce things off each other as they investigate crimes that it was weird having a story without him as part of the team. But we get to see more of Trinity, Josie’s twin sister, as she uses her journalistic know-how to help Josie piece together clues. And this time, Turner isn’t quite as much of a troll as he has been in previous books. Maybe he’ll actually end up being a likable person and a good detective? We can hope!
The story ties up some of the loose ends left hanging from Josie’s younger years. And as she so often does, Lisa Regan ends things in a way that leaves me biting my nails waiting for the next one. I’m not going to tell you how she does it. That’s her job, and she does it admirably. Go get the book and get to reading! And while you can read this book as a stand-alone, you’ll want to start with book one and get alllllllll the backstory.
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of the book from Bookouture. I was not required to leave a review. All opinions are mine, and I don’t say nice things about books I don’t actually like.
