Guest Review: Shattered Secrets by Karen Harper

Jen’s review of Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1) by Karen Harper

Every town has its secrets…

Returning to Cold Creek, Ohio, is an act of courage for Tess Lockwood. Abducted and held captive as a young girl, she is unable to remember anything about the crime that destroyed her childhood and tore her family apart. Now a grown woman with a bright future, she is certain she has put the past behind her. But when she inherits the family home, Tess must confront the demons that still haunt her and the town of Cold Creek.

Gabe McCord has always blamed himself for what happened to Tess. He had been a teenager when she was snatched from the group of children he was responsible for watching. Now Gabe has taken on the role of sheriff and hopes to shed new light on the cold case, especially given his growing feelings for Tess.

Tess isn’t ready to recall what happened to her, and she has no intention of digging up any details that might remind her of the truth. But when another child in the town goes missing, she’s certain it’s related to her return to Cold Creek. Together,Tess and Gabe will have to work to unlock their painful memories in order to save another child and heal their damaged souls, for good…

Tess Lockwood has reluctantly returned to Cold Creek, Ohio to sell her mother’s house. When she was a young child, Tess was kidnapped from her backyard and was missing for eight months before turning up wandering down a country road alone with no memory of what happened. Eighteen years later, Tess still hasn’t remembered, but being back in Cold Creek is starting to bring up memories. Gabe McCord was Tess’s childhood neighbor and the young teen in charge of watching her and her siblings the day she went missing. Now, he’s the town sheriff and is investigating three other kidnappings. He’s hoping Tess’s memories may hold the key to finding the other girls, but even more than that he’s finding himself personally drawn to Tess. Can they find the kidnapper before anyone else gets hurt?

Let me start with what I liked about this book. I thought the mystery was great. It wasn’t impossible to guess because there were lots of slightly-too-obvious signs the villain sent off, but it was still a pretty complex guessing game. There were lots of possible suspects, some interesting red herrings, and a good dose of tension as Tess and Gabe try to sort things out. As this book is the first in a series, presumably some of the unresolved plot lines will be explored further in the future. I also enjoyed the villain. This person is pretty over the top, but it was a twist you don’t normally see!

Unfortunately, there were some things that kept me fully enjoying the mystery. First, I felt like some plot elements were odd and jumped around. For example, there’s a whole conflict with her dad that just made zero sense to me–perhaps this is something that will be discussed in more depth in future books, but it felt out of place and unresolved here. Much of the dialogue is stilted and unnatural sounding, and there are lots of info-dumpy comments that make things sound even more unrealistic. Even more disappointing for a romantic thriller, the relationship between Tess and Gabe was weak and uninteresting. They don’t really spend much time getting to know each other or talking about anything other than the kidnappings. Perhaps if Tess had spent her entire childhood in Cold Creek some of that “getting to know you” could have been skipped, but she left when she was still a young child, and she really didn’t know the teenage Gabe that well. Their relationship has no sizzle or tension either. For example:

She could tell Gabe had wanted to make her feel comfortable, yet she felt unsafe with him. She admitted to herself the reason was that he kind of got to her. He was really sexy and she hadn’t been expecting that.

Descriptions like “he kind of got to her” and “really sexy” don’t exactly scream passion, but they are typical of how Tess and Gabe interact and think about each other. The book has no sex but that’s not really the issue–there was just no zing between them, nothing to make me believe these two people belonged together.

This story had a good structure, but the characterizations and dialogue left me underwhelmed.

Grade: 2.5 out of 5

This book is available from Harlequin MIRA. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.  This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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