A Deadly Wilderness ~ Reader Friday

A Deadly Wilderness by Kelly Irvin is this week’s Reader Friday. Here are the first two lines: The hunt had been good. Lalo Hernandez veered from the trail, scooted through a stand of trees, and crouched behind thick bushes, enjoying the warm noontime sun on his back.

But first the photo and verse. My son-in-law has been at it again–fishing at daybreak. He snapped this sunrise photo just this week, and it’s beautiful. I love that verse, and somehow it just seemed to go with the verse.

Now for A Deadly Wilderness, by Kelly Irvin. Here’s the cover and back copy:

A frantic anonymous crisis center hotline call propels counselor Susana Martinez-Acosta smack into the center of a murder investigation and a homicide detective’s arms. Exactly where she doesn’t want to be. Following the tragic death of her husband, she’s struggled to build a safe haven for herself and her son. That new world doesn’t include hitmen and persistent detectives with dangerous jobs.

An idyllic wilderness hike turns deadly when homicide detective Ray Johnson tumbles into a ravine and lands on a corpse later identified as the son of a prominent citizen. Ray works to solve the political hot-potato murder before city leaders bump him from the case. His determination to find the man’s killer leads him from the wealthiest enclaves in San Antonio to the city’s dark underbelly, all the while trying to win the woman he loves.

A Deadly Wilderness is a romantic suspense novel that will take the reader along on a tumultuous journey as the consuming need for material wealth drives a deadly wedge among family members who haven’t learned when enough really is enough.

The journey ends where it began—in a deadly wilderness. Not everyone will survive the trip.

My take:

A Deadly Wilderness by Kelly Irvin kept me up past midnight, flipping pages to see what would happen next. Her characters immediately drew me in, and the suspense and mystery kept me guessing who the bad guy was. She totally captures the life of a police officer with the ups and downs of the job.

Each character in this multiple-viewpoint book was well drawn — I could feel their hopes and fears. I totally understood Susana’s fear that if she married Ray, she might become a widow again, and her son would lose another person he loved. Seeing how both Ray and Susana coped with the loss of a mate showed how two people could process the same thing differently. Irwin will draw you into this well-written mystery as she weaves all the threads together. This is a book readers of Lynette Eason’s books will love.

A Deadly Wilderness is available in KU or for purchase here!

Okay, Readers, what are you reading this week? Leave the title or first line in the comments.  I’ll enter you in a drawing for a $10 gift card from Amazon…or someplace else…

By the way…I was looking at my books on Amazon and came across my very first romance story for Harlequin Heartwarming! This was such a fun book to write…once I learned how to write a romance. lol Check it out! It’s in KU

In this second-chance romance from the USA Today–bestselling author, a man questions his life choices when he reunites with the first woman he ever loved.