CALCULATED REVENGE When a former classmate is murdered at Detective Caleb Lyons’s ten-year high school reunion, he knows the victim’s old group of friends are keeping secrets. That includes Cedar Key, Florida, police officer Amber Kingston. Back in school, Amber was headed for trouble, but now she’s as dedicated to the law as he is. As he works overtime to get the pretty cop to open up to him, … up to him, Amber and her friends receive messages threatening payback for past deeds. And her friends keep dying…one by one. But protecting Amber and unmasking a murderer isn’t just the widowed detective’s shot at redemption–it’s his unexpected second chance at love.
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I received a copy of this book from the author, I was not required to give a favorable review. This is a really suspenseful story, you don’t want to put it down. It starts in high school with a death, now 10 years later at the class reunion they are all there, but unfortunately there is a secret between them. Amber is sent a request from her friend Mona to attend because she want to touch base before she passes away from cancer. But while she is there, one of her classmates dies at the venue, Amber, has gotten her life together and is now a police officer. But the officer in charge of the investigation in old home town is Caleb, he was always the good guy. But they figure out Mona was actually dead, and she was murdered, and they are all left a poem. You will be surprised who the killer really is.
It definitely was suspenseful and a great read. It went from suspense to romance and made for a great combination of the two.
I enjoyed the suspense of this book, though I must admit that I figured out pretty early in the book who the killer was. I know for some people that might be frustrating, but knowing who the killer was so quickly almost made the book more suspenseful for me as I waited for the main characters to figure things out and as I watched situations unfold, not knowing exactly how or when the killer would strike, but knowing who it was.
Another aspect of this book that I found to be interesting was the previous relationship between Amber and Caleb from when they were younger. In most romances that I’ve read where the two main characters knew each other in high school, they either dated each other, at least one of them had a crush on the other, there was an unrequited love situation between the two, or there was some kind of pretty big history between them in some other way. With Caleb and Amber, though, they were simply acquaintances in high school, not in some kind of relationship with each other. I found that deviation from the typical plot line to be refreshing. It gave their developing relationship a different feel than in other books I’ve read and I appreciated that.
Spoiler Alert: The following two paragraphs may contain what some would consider to be spoilers.
While Caleb and Amber don’t have a past relationship together that they need to work through, they each do have things in their individual pasts that have caused them to have some hang ups and I was glad to see them work through those things so they could come together in the end. One side aspect of the book that I would have liked to see developed a little more was Amber’s relationship with her parents, especially her dad. She took some blame on herself for some things that happened with her dad that I don’t believe were her fault. I would have liked to have seen a conversation between her and at least one of her parents where those things were cleared up.
Amber does not have a relationship with the Lord even though she grew up in a Christian home. She struggles with guilt and condemnation (much of which she heaps on herself) and she doesn’t really believe God wants anything to do with her. She seems to believe that she needs to take care of everything herself. She also looks at certain others and assumes that they’ve never messed up and that must be what puts them in right standing with God. Throughout the book, Amber hears two different messages, one about David and the other about Peter. The messages talk about how both men messed up, yet they turned back to God and He forgave them and restored them. But it’s not until she also hears Caleb’s personal testimony that she really begins to believe it can be so for her, too. Amber tells Caleb, “I’m not sure the first two would have stuck without the third.” That statement really struck me. It reminded me of how important it is to share our struggles with others and how God helped us through them. Amber needed to see the message about David and Peter played out in someone in her life before it really hit home for her. We never know when sharing our struggles and the times we’ve overcome through Jesus with someone will be the thing they need to see to trust Him. Maybe they’ve heard stories of God working in the Bible, but when they’ve looked at the world they live in, they don’t see Him because no one has ever shared with them how He has worked in their personal lives. It takes seeing God at work in the life of someone they know for them to see that God is still at work today like He was in the Bible.
Overall, I really enjoyed Reunited by Danger, from the suspense to the relationship development to the spiritual aspects dealt with in the book.
**I was provided a free copy of this book. All opinions are my own.