Book reviews - Sins of the Fathers, The Other Wife

Sins of the Fathers by J.A. Jance
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been 2 long years since the last installment of the JP Beaumont series.

This was a really good installment in the series!

Beau is enjoying his retirement and enjoying his time with Lucy, the dog who made a memorable impression in the last book, Proof of Life. One day, Alan Dale shows up at his door with a baby in a carrier. (Alan and his wife showed up in a previous book, but I can't figure out which one, but just enough of that story is laid out in this book.) The baby is 6 weeks old and was born addicted to methadone and then abandoned by her mother. The baby is Alan's granddaughter and his daughter has gone missing and he wants Beau to find her so that he can get full custody of the granddaughter.

As Beau starts his investigation, I did have some guesses about where it was going to go and how everything was going to be intertwined. How he gets the clues and fits them together is always enjoyable to follow for me. There was a lot of revisiting his old haunts and some 'cameos' by characters in previous books. It was nice to sort of catch up with some of those characters.

If this is the last installment in the series, I would be happy with how it ends. If there are more books, I will be thrilled to continue along on the journey with Beau and Mel!


View all my reviews

The Other Wife by Claire McGowan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

**I received a Kindle version of this novel as a giveaway on Goodreads.**

Suzi has a secret. And she thinks that no one else knows what it is.

Suzi's husband, Nick, has moved her to a remote cottage and paid for massive renovations to make her more comfortable as she is expecting. Nora, a recent widower, has moved into the run down cottage across the road and Suzi is hoping that with a new neighbor that she won't feel as lonely. But her secret is weighing her down. But Nora already knows the secret. And Elle spends her days trying to make her husband happy and anticipate his every want and need, but he spends his time gaslighting her. But what do these three women have in common?

The novel is told from the points of view of Suzi, Nora, Elle, as well as a detective 3 months from the main storyline. As the story develops, we learn that there are things that Suzi thinks are private that Nora is aware of. And there are things that Nora observes about Suzi's and Nick's lives that Suzi is oblivious to but that seem blatantly obvious to the reader as well. Nick has very much isolated Suzi in a remote area without a car and he is very controlling of her life.

This was a fast paced thriller with a few twists thrown in that were unexpected. The progression of Nora's intentions through the book was unexpected, but understandable. Some questions were left about Elle's back story, but I didn't find the unanswered questions troublesome. There were no parts that I felt stalled the story or were extraneous to the story. There may have been a few parts towards the end that could have been expanded on, but I don't feel that this took away from the story.

Claire McGowan is a new to me author and I enjoyed the flow and the balance of the story as well as the writing in the novel. I will be reading more of her novels.



View all my reviews