Nate Monroe and Madison Harper were both framed for crimes they didn’t commit. Madison served her time; Nate was exonerated, but both of them are still hungry for revenge and to bring to justice those who wronged them. Now they’ve teamed up as PIs, working together to find Jenny, a little girl who’s gone missing from her summer camp.
There’s an inbuilt conflict here as Madison is a former cop and Nate doesn’t trust cops (for good reason). Honestly, I thought Madison still having faith in the police when she knows she was probably framed by someone in her own department was naive, but her skills do come in very handy in their PI work, and it’s not long before Nate starts to see that. Nate’s own backstory as an almost-priest doesn’t really come into play much here - he could have gained someone’s trust by asking to pray with them, for example - but as this is obviously the first in the series, I’ll definitely be interested to see where it goes next.
Some chapters written from the point of view of a psychiatrist reading a patient’s journals are sprinkled throughout, and for a long time it seems that they don’t have any relevance to the case. It’s not until late in the book that it’s revealed the patient is a major player we’ve been reading about all along. Honestly, I think these could have been cut; they didn’t add anything significant to the story we didn’t find out elsewhere, and it was more satisfying to read about Madison and Nate uncovering the truth than the psychiatrist, who seemed more concerned about her own future career than anything else.
With that said, this is SUCH a good story. There are some genuinely fascinating twists and turns, I really liked both Madison and Nate and I’m fascinated to know more of both their backstories and hope they both find justice - and I hope Nate figures out how to handle Brody, the ex-cadaver dog he ‘accidentally’ acquired during the story properly!
Five stars for a really great read, and I’ll be looking out for the next in the series.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via NetGalley.
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