Reviewer: Tracy A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: December 3, 2019
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Point-of-View: Third
Genres: Mystery
Pages: 352
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New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh welcomes you to a remote town on the edge of the world where even the blinding brightness of the sun can’t mask the darkness that lies deep within a killer…
On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates.
That is until one fateful summer—and several vanished bodies—shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement not to look back. But they can’t run from the past forever.
Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape. It’s not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets come to light.
Anahera returns to Golden Cove in her home country of New Zealand to hide away. Her husband died seven months earlier and she was devastated. That is, until she returned home and found his pregnant mistress in her house. Trying to deal with his death, as well as his betrayal, was too much for her and she needed to get out of London and go home.
There are a lot of people in her hometown that she knows and grew up with as well as some newbies. There are also a lot of painful memories in this town for Anahera, but also some wonderful ones of her mother.
Unfortunately Anahera’s quest for solitude is disrupted when a young woman goes missing. Anahera ends up helping the new constable, Will, in trying to locate the girl – along with the rest of the town. As Anahera and Will work together they become find an affinity between them. Their true focus, however, is on what happened to Miriama, and how her disappearance might have something to do with 3 female hikers that went missing 15 years earlier.
I absolutely love Nalini Singh’s romances so I was pretty excited when I realized that she had written this mystery. The main focus of this book is the disappearance of the girl and finding out exactly what happened to her, but Singh does manage to throw in a smidgen of romance, which I appreciated.
Singh does an great job with her character development, her descriptions of New Zealand and of course her writing. It definitely kept me reading and anxious to find out what was going to happen, but unfortunately I had figured out whodunnit pretty early in the book. I was surprised by some of the details but not by the culprit.
While I enjoyed the writing, the story didn’t blow me away. I liked that Anahera and Will were flawed people, and I was happy that they found each other – unfortunately they still kind of fell flat for me. I didn’t really connect with either one of them and that was disappointing.
Overall a decent read that’s well written.
Rating 3.5 out of 5
I’m definitely interested in reading this! Thanks for your review, Tracy.