It was supposed to be a routine road accident recovery, but the moment Detective Josie Quinn sees the passenger—pale and painfully thin, a sharp tool lodged in her stomach—it’s clear she was the victim of something far more sinister, and likely dead before the crash. Watching the driver taken away in an ambulance, questions spin through Josie’s mind. Where were these two women going? Was the driver trying to save a life, or hide a body? And—most heartbreaking of all—is there a child in danger, crying out for help with no reply?

Josie quickly identifies the crash survivor as Mira Summers, a singleton and animal-lover on her way home from nearby stables. Mira swears she doesn’t know who the woman in the car beside her is, or how she was injured. And when she’s diagnosed with concussion and memory loss, Josie is forced to back down.

But the discovery of Mira’s prints on the child’s drawing is all the proof Josie needs that Mira knows more than she’s letting on, and a witness saw Mira meeting with a man with a gnarled diamond-shaped tattoo at the stables. In a race against the clock to track down this elusive man, Josie faces danger from the most unexpected places. Pushed to her limit, can she stay alive long enough to catch the killer and save the life of an innocent child?

335pages | 61 Chapter

There was one continuing opinion I shared with Josie, Noah, Gretchen, and even Dr. Feist – the new team member, Turner, is a massive TWAT. Way to make a character unlikable from the get go. This character is a massive ‘red flag’ walker. I know next to nothing about him after spending 335 pages with him. He severely gave me the ick. BUT I’m not writing him off. There will be a reason that Regan has introduced this character to the series and I am eager for answers.

The plot of this book follows Mira Summers, April Carlton, and a missing child. Mira Summers is the main character in the crime to be solved and creates what becomes a pretty elaborate spiders web of information.

This story is not an easy fix, it doesn’t follow a logical line and there are many points to take stock of. I was so wrapped up in repeatedly referring to Turner as a twat in my head, that I’d almost convinced myself he was the mastermind behind all the crimes. In hindsight, it was a nifty bit of writing on Regan’s part to gently nudge the reader into that possibility.

The guilty party could also not be attributed to one individual and this isn’t me giving a massive spoiler, it is just that there were so many layers of this story that overlapped with each other that it became impossible to fathom how one person could manage to accomplish it all singlehandedly.

The missing child aspect of the book did put me on edge. All crime fiction involving children is a tight line for me as to whether I can deal with it or not. There are no killer POV chapters in this book but there are chapters in the POV of the child. I knew going in that I needed to keep an open mind and allow the story time to play out naturally. In this instance the child POV chapters were not a deal breaker and did not negatively impact my read in any way.

With Josie and Noah, the needs of the relationship have recovered from what was said in Book 19. They have moved to discover new avenues and have support from all those around them. It is so interesting to me seeing the characters they are now from the characters they were in Book 1. There have been many ups and downs on their road but they both have a level of resilience I wish I could attain.

Even in times of strife, they are so completely in sync with each other. It’s a joy to read honestly. I can see several directions of where their latest evolvement can go and am certain in the knowledge that this next chapter of their lives will come together positively, no matter how long it takes them to get there.

The book is only 335pg, so it’s not a massive read but I did feel like it took a long time to finish it. I think mainly because there is so much going on that my brain needed to pause and process but also because I had a nap in the middle of reading it.