Dani Pettrey Launches a New Romantic Suspense SeriesIn college, Griffin McCray and his four best friends had their lives planned out. Griffin and Luke Gallagher would join the Baltimore PD. Declan Gray would head to the FBI and Parker Mitchell would go on to graduate school as a crime scene analyst. But then Luke vanished before graduation and their world–and friendships–crumbled. Now Griffin … friendships–crumbled.
Now Griffin is a park ranger at Gettysburg, having left life as a SWAT-team sniper when a case went bad. The job is mostly quiet–until the day he captures two relic hunters uncovering skeletal remains near Little Round Top. Griffin just wants the case to go away, but charming forensic anthropologist Finley Scott determines that the body is modern–a young social justice lawyer missing since spring–and all evidence points to the work of an expert sniper. When FBI agent Declan Gray takes over the case, past and present collide. Griffin soon realizes he’ll need to confront some of the darkest days of his life if he–and those he cares about–are going to escape a downward spiral of murder that crosses continents.
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I stumbled across the third book in the Chesapeake Valor series somewhat on accident. I was drawn into the synopsis of the book and nabbed it up. That’s been months ago because life keeps happening all around me. And it’s third. I’ve nabbed up the first two and here we sit. Mystery is one of my top genres to read and the Christian Fiction market for this genre just isn’t vast enough. As I stumble across new to me authors I jump in feet first. Usually that comes up pretty amazing, sometimes it comes up pretty OK, and on rare occasion I just pray I can find the worlds to express why it didn’t work for me at all while knowing that it will for someone else. Thankfully ‘Cold Shot’ came in right in the middle of that list.
Let me draw you into my brain for a minute and explain why this book didn’t work for me. It wasn’t a total didn’t work so don’t panic there’s good stuff too. Characters. Volume. The sheer number of characters that were too much alike was overwhelming and honestly, I’ve already started book 2 in this series and I still can’t tell anyone apart. They are too similar, the guys and the girls as well, and they blur for me. This is a known Fizzy issue if you can remember but I felt like I was drowning in characters who I couldn’t keep straight. Secondly I want to talk about the faith content. I love a good mystery that weaves in faith through the characters in an authentic way. Authentic is the key word here. The faith was solid in this book but it didn’t feel authentic, it felt formal and stilted and almost like a toss in. I just didn’t connect with these characters and their faith base. The final big issue I had with this particular book was how much happened off screen. I had a hard time finding myself in the midst of the drama and suspense. I had a hard time connecting all the dots, even when it was wrapped up, because so much was told to me instead of involving me. That alone is a killer (no pun intended) in a murder mystery.
Yes, I was given enough clues to follow along and to be fair, the main reason this book is rated as high as I did is solely based on the fact that with the information I was given I never did piece it all together until it was presented to me. I wanted to love this book. Honestly, I needed to love this book. I have heard such great things about the author and about the series. I’m not sure how much the lack of love and veering toward OK was more a me thing or a book thing. What I do know is that the bones are there for greatness. So I’m going to follow those bones, keep reading book two, obviously read book three and then figure it out from there since the fourth book is coming out later this year.