Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The View From Rainshadow Bay

If there was a reward for book who has a cover that does not match the plot, this would win hands down!

The View From Rainshadow Bay - Colleen Coble

After her husband, Jack, dies in a climbing incident, Shauna has only her five-year-old son and her helicopter charter business to live for. Every day is a struggle to make ends meet and she lives in constant fear of losing even more than she already has.


When her business partner is murdered, his final words convince Shauna that she’s in danger too. But where can she turn? Zach Bannister was her husband’s best friend and is the person she blames for his death. She’s barely spoken to him since. But right now he seems her only hope for protecting her son.



Zach is only too happy to assuage his guilt over Jack’s death by helping Shauna any way he can. But there are secrets involved dating back to Shauna’s childhood that more than one person would prefer to stay hidden.



In The View from Rainshadow Bay, suspense, danger, and a longing to love again ignite amid the gorgeous lavender fields of Washington State.


I'll start by saying I'm giving this one a solid 4 stars. It's got a slow burn romance, but the suspense/thriller aspect of it is what carries this book. You wouldn't expect, judging by the cover, that we would have four dead within the first 100 pages, but the author comes out swinging as the Grim Reaper. She slows it up a bit, almost too much, for the rest of the book where we try to piece together seemingly random clues to find out what happened to all of these people. We find that deaths that have happened aren't what they seem, the past will always come back to haunt the present, and by the time we get to the whodunit, I didn't see it coming. I had an alternative theory that ended up not being it at all and that was a good surprise.

We have Shauna, still reeling from her husband's untimely death, front and center in the death of her good friend Clarence. She knows for certain it wasn't a gas leak but rather a bomb that blew up his home and killed him in the process. Grappling with that we have another death rather quickly which leaves Shauna in clear danger, forcing her to rely on Zach- her husband's best friend but who she also blames for his death because Zach was the only other person on their climbing trip. When her house is destroyed, and random clues that don't fit just yet but feel like they are connected, it's clear that there is a larger motive at play which leave Shauna and Zach to piece together because local law enforcement isn't great. Can they figure out who is at fault for all of this? What do all of these random clues mean?

Overall it's a pretty solid book, rivals something you'd expect from maybe Sandra Brown or even a lighter fare Nora Roberts, it has a great suspense plot to it. I feel like some of the strings left hanging like the police side of it was a bit of a let down. All of these higher up law enforcement were called in and we don't really hear much. We also meet so many characters, sure to be a distraction and get us wondering who the killer is, but I feel like the snippet of story introduced for them didn't go anywhere. I'm not saying this book should be any longer, in fact I would cut some chunks out to bring it down a bit, but it was a solid read. Once the murders happened and clues start piling up, I was sucked in and wanted to know what was going on.

If you're looking for a cozy mystery to get through the doldrums of winter, this would be a good pick.

   

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