#TheWrongVictim – Rosepoint Publishing

Rosepoint Reviews – July Recap – Wild Weather and Scorching Temps

Rosepoint Reviews - July Recap

July in the upper Midwest is a volatile month with sudden, violent thunderstorms or tornadoes or highs in the low seventies with a cool breeze. You can’t accuse the area of boring weather. Still, I shouldn’t be grousing as with the sudden drenching rains and warm to hot days, the lawn has gone nuts—you can almost literally watch grass grow here—and my garden is loving it. Well, my sugar snap peas didn’t love it so much.

Late start with the garden, slow spring, and just now beginning to get some tomatoes trying to ripen. The baby deer are beginning to venture out—still have their spots. They look sweet until they get into my garden—squash being the current favorite. The CE is happy about that though.
Fawns with spots

We are trying to get in some steps, got the bikes all pumped up—and walking or riding any semi-cool mornings we can get. Still we managed fourteen books in July. These are mostly from NetGalley and also my local library with both audiobooks and digital. (As always, links below are to my reviews that include purchase info.)

Rosepoint Reviews - July Recap
Drowning in the Desert by Bernard Schopen (CE review)
The Night We Burned by S F Kosa
The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda (audiobook)
Splinter by Paul McHugh (CE review)
Trotting Into Trouble by Amber Camp
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (audiobook)
The Last Ranger by Peter Heller (CE review)
Home at Night by Paula Munier
The Wrong Victim by Allison Brennan (audiobook)
Night Owl by Andrew Mayne (CE review)
Some of Us Are Looking by Carlene O’Connor
Unwrapped by Lynda McDaniel
All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers (audiobook)
The Cove by Gregg Dunnett (CE review)

These included historical fiction, literary fiction, psychological fiction, cozy mysteries, and thrillers.

Favorite Book of the Month

I was gifted two ARCs from favorite authors in July, one being Unwrapped by Lynda McDaniel and the other, Some of Us Are Looking by Carlene O’Connor, both of which earned my five stars. I really like that slightly darker turn in Ms O’Connor’s Irish mysteries and Unwrapped proved to have a sweet Hallmark type of ending–timed perfectly for the Christmas season. The CE also had a couple he particularly enjoyed, one for the sense of humor (The Last Ranger) and another because of that totally off-the-wall wallop of a surprise ending (The Cove). There were several others hovering in the 4.5 star range for both of us–it was one of those great reading months. But in the end, I’ll have to go with–

Book of the Month for July—Unwrapped.

My Reading Challenges page… I have 88 books of a goal of 145 in Goodreads (one book ahead of schedule) and still riding at a 97% feedback ratio in NetGalley. As always, I’m struggling to keep up with the rest. *Sigh* Maybe after the summer months…

First the death of the Instagram feed—then Musk messed with Twitter—and there went that feed. I’d boycott that stupid “X” but need to Twitter away my reviews. Is anyone getting around this (other than adding another job to the post) so they can show both feeds on their blog? All I’ve got now are the blank spaces where those feeds used to show up in my right column. Any suggestions, help, or ideas? I’d welcome them all!

Welcome to my new subscribers and thank you, as always, to those who read and comment. I love hearing from you!

k-luv-u-bye

The Wrong Victim by Allison Brennan – #AudiobookReview – #ThrowbackThursday

A Quinn & Costa Thriller Book 3

Book Blurb:

A lethal attack with no clear motive…and a killer dead-set on keeping the truth buried.

A bomb explodes on a sunset charter cruise out of Friday Harbor at the height of tourist season and kills everyone on board. Now this fishing and boating community is in shock and asking who would commit such a heinous crime—the largest act of mass murder in the history of the San Juan Islands.

Was the explosion an act of domestic terrorism, or was one of the dead the primary target? That is the first question Special Agent Matt Costa, Detective Kara Quinn and the rest of the FBI team need to answer, but they have few clues and no witnesses.

Accused of putting profits before people after leaking fuel endangered an environmentally sensitive preserve, the West End Charter company may itself have been the target. As Matt and his team get closer to answers, they find one of their own caught in the crosshairs of a determined killer.

My Review:

My step into the author that the CE sampled last year, this one in the middle of an established somewhat hard-boiled series. I was attracted to the Pacific Northwest location of the San Juan Islands on the coast of Seattle, a gorgeous historic oceanside area.

In this episode, Special Agent Matt Costa and Detective Kara Quinn join with the rest of the FBI team following the explosion of a sunset charter cruise in Friday Harbor. They begin by looking at those individuals who were killed by the bombing and there is also the question of whether or not the target was directed against the West End Charter Company.

They have been joined this time by Catherine Jones, an FBI forensic psychiatrist, who immediately clashes with Kara. Kara has pulled herself up by her bootstraps, has LA street smarts, and finds Catherine’s grating methods ill-conceived and laced by over-education rather than real-time experience. Catherine is the perfect antagonist, proves to be the irritation focus in the foreground while the team quietly works in the background to pick apart the bits of the what, why, and who.

The bombing is a hook that serves to lay the plot for the complex storyline but I had a problem engaging in Kara who proves rough around the edges bordering on crude, the obvious antithesis of Catherine. I felt the narrative bogged down somewhat by all the in-fighting and found my attention wavering. The novel could have been shorter and carried more punch.

As the plot adds additional persons of interest and the body count rises, it becomes clear there is another layer that feels like it is reaching a bit far. It does find a solid conclusion but at the loss of my interest.

The CE read North of Nowhere last year, our first experience with this author and narrator, and one that left him a bit exasperated. I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Book Details:

Genre: Police Procedural Mysteries, Crime Thrillers, Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin Audio
ASIN: B09GL4CQ82
Listening Length: 13 hrs 13 mins
Narrator: Suzanne T. Fortin
Publication Date: April 26, 2022
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Wrong Victim [Amazon]

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

The Author: Allison Brennan is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award winning author of three dozen thrillers and numerous short stories. She was nominated for Best Paperback Original Thriller by International Thriller Writers, had multiple nominations and two Daphne du Maurier Awards, and is a five-time RITA finalist for Best Romantic Suspense. Allison believes life is too short to be bored, so she had five kids and spends all her non-writing time as a sports spectator, chauffeur, and short-order cook for her munchkins. She has a dog, two cats, and three chickens. Allison and her family live in northern California.