Review: Set the Dark on Fire by Jill Sorenson

Genres: Romantic Suspense

Casee‘s review of Set the Dark on Fire by Jill Sorenson.

Shay Phillips knows her way around Dark Canyon. She’s handy with a gun and can track a wild animal with the best of them. It’s humans who usually give her the most trouble. And with a hormonally charged teenage brother to raise—and an admitted weakness for the wrong kind of man—they’re giving her plenty of trouble these days. Then there’s the matter of murder. As an expert on mountain lions, Shay is skeptical when a local prostitute turns up mauled without a drop of blood near the body.

Now, together with the town’s newly arrived sheriff, Luke Meza—a Las Vegas city boy with his own dark secrets—Shay must navigate a dangerous valley filled with angry ex-lovers, unfaithful spouses, and poisonous snakes in a desperate search for the killer. But when suspicion falls on her own brother, and her attraction to Luke rages into a full-on erotic affair, can Shay quell the fires inside her long enough to uncover the truth?

I really enjoyed Crash Into Me, so I was looking forward to reading this book. While I didn’t like it as much as Crash Into Me, it was still darn good. I think one of the reasons that I like these books so much is b/c of the heroes. They really remind me of Linda Howard’s heroes; once they decide they want something, they don’t let anyone stop them.

When Luke Meza first meets Shay Phillips, he’s far from impressed. Though he takes an almost instant dislike to her, he still needs her help. He has a dead body that appears to have been bitten by a mountain lion, which is something that Shay specializes in.

Shay immediately senses Luke’s disdain for her and she is embarrassed, then just mad. When she sees the body, she immediately notices that there is a mountain lion bite on the neck. That still doesn’t mean that a lion actually killed the person. Add the fact that there is no blood where the body is discovered and Shay is confident that the body was killed in a very human way.

When another murder occurs, the authorities look to her teenage brother. Dylan is a troubled boy, but Shay doesn’t believe that he is capable of cold-blooded murder. I think one of the best parts of the book was Shay and Dylan’s relationship. Shay was so focused on making sure that Dylan made it out of the town that seems to do nothing but hold people back that she forgot he was a person too.

Jill Sorenson really has a knack for writing teenage characters. The angst and turmoil is so spot on. When you’re a teenager, you think for the “now” and nothing is as important as what is going on in the moment you’re in. Dylan definitely added to the story. It wouldn’t have been the same without him.

I read another review (can’t remember where) where the reviewer said that the jump between Luke’s disdain for Shay and then his about-face was just too quick a leap. There was no real reason for Luke to go from one extreme to the other, but that’s exactly what happened.

4 out of 5.

This book is available from Bantam. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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