While
fighting in Afghanistan, Major Grant Barrett receives devastating news:
his brother and sister-in-law have been murdered in Scarlet Falls, the
sleepy suburb of Grant’s youth. Emotionally scarred from war, the career
soldier returns home on emergency leave to temporarily care for his
orphaned nephew and niece. But when someone tries to kidnap the kids and
their teenage babysitter, Grant knows it’s not a random act…and neither
were the murders.
Already devastated by her neighbors’ violent deaths, Ellie Ross is shattered by the attempted abduction of her teenage daughter so she desperately turns to Grant for help. As they navigate a deadly search for the truth, they struggle with growing feelings for each other and Grant’s impending return to deployment.
But time is running out. The killer is growing bolder by the hour, and Ellie and Grant must find him before the children become his next victims.
Already devastated by her neighbors’ violent deaths, Ellie Ross is shattered by the attempted abduction of her teenage daughter so she desperately turns to Grant for help. As they navigate a deadly search for the truth, they struggle with growing feelings for each other and Grant’s impending return to deployment.
But time is running out. The killer is growing bolder by the hour, and Ellie and Grant must find him before the children become his next victims.
This is the first book that I've read by Melinda Leigh but it most certainly won't be the last. If the rest of her novels are anything like this one, she is definitely one of my top ten favorites!! I just absolutely adored just about everything having to do with this novel. There is one exception but I'll cover that after the good stuff.
I really love the romantic suspense genre. To me, it has the best of both worlds! Other than that, I don't really have any reason to love it. I just do. Anyhow, I have super high expectations because of the sheer number of romantic suspense novels that I've read but this one is right up there with the best of them. Let's see ... first thing ... the beginning of this novel is going to rip your heart out and then stomp on it and just to had insult to injury, a bird flies by and craps on you. It was pretty shocking to have this kind of scenario happen in a book and then for it to be right in the beginning, I just knew that this author was made for me.
My emotions were pretty much all over the place with this one. I was devastatingly sad and then mad and then scared and happy and everything in between. The author has really fine tuned her craft - to be able to elicit such STRONG emotions from a reader is, I would think, the main reason behind writing. And man. Melinda Leigh is good. She's REALLY good.
Another awesome thing is that not only do you become extremely attached to the characters, but they are believable and you can't get enough of any of them. You know, some authors just can't get the voice of a child or teenager down onto a page ... they end up making the character sound ridiculous and unbelievable but Leigh was just completely spot on. She could go from the child talking to the Major to the teenage girl and the villain and you could really distinguish between each character's voice. It was refreshing. Love!!
Now ... there's that one exception to my love that I spoke about earlier. It's really not that big of a deal but it is bothering me and so I have to bring it up. The cover. It's great. Until you look at the person running. For some reason, I can't look at the person's hair without seeing Chewbacca's face!!! It just really bothers me. Totally inconsequential but there it is. I hope that you don't see the same thing now that I brought it up. Well, that's not true. I don't want to be the only one.
Now Hour of Need doesn't come out until December 9th. Defintely put it on your list to read. You'll blow through it, I promise!!
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