Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; [Audio CD]; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496702548; [9781977354680]
Kensington Publishing; [Tantor Audio]
288 Pages
$7.99; [$23.99]; $1.99* Amazon (*Sale)
August 30, 2016
⭐⭐⭐⭐
This Halloween, Hayley can't imagine a worse trick than her ex-husband Danny returning to Bar Harbor. Her kids may be happy to see their dad, but Hayley's determined not to be taken in by his charms, and suspects he's in financial trouble -- again.
Still, the haunted holiday is about to get a whole lot scarier after Danny's moonshine-making uncle is found lying dead next to a tombstone in a cemetery -- and Danny quickly becomes the prime suspect. To prove her ex is innocent, Hayley will have to dig deep into her own bag of tricks to unmask the real culprit...before anyone else -- including her -- ends up in the graveyard...
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Hayley Powell is the office manager and a columnist at a newspaper in Bar Harbor, Maine. She's created a decent life for herself and her two kids, Gemma and Dustin, after her divorce from her husband, Danny. But when she shows up home one night, she sees two carved pumpkins on her doorstep and knows that they couldn't have been done by anyone else except Danny. Knowing he must be with his drunkard of an uncle, Otis, she heads out to the cabin in the woods and finds them both.
Danny insists he's changed and is just there for a visit, and wants to spend time with them. Knowing her ex, she's naturally suspicious and doesn't believe a word of it, but she allows Danny to temporarily disrupt her life anyway -- while waiting for the ball to drop. When Otis is found dead in a graveyard, it's soon apparent he's been murdered. It's also apparent that Danny's the main suspect when Otis's money is found missing, and even though she doesn't believe he's guilty, she needs to figure out who is before he winds up in prison.
But more things are going on behind the scene: Hayley and her co-worker Bruce Linney have gone to see a reclusive horror author, but are told by his assistant Shane that he's ill and can't see anyone. Disappointed, they tell him they'll try again but Hayley becomes suspicious (again) when he puts them off. Then she finds out that Dustin's friend has written a horror novel and submitted it to the reclusive Norman Cross; her ex-boyfriend and Gemma's employer, veterinarian Aaron, has a new girlfriend who's an attorney named Crystal who also apparently hates Hayley on sight and Gemma's having problems at work with her co-worker; and to top things off, Danny's crazy ex-girlfriend Becky shows up in Bar Harbor insisting she wants him back. Couple that with two shady men following her and Danny around town, and you have what is a very interesting Halloween...if Hayley can live to see it...
This is the eighth book in the series, and while I wasn't enamored of the previous ones, I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. There's plenty of action that didn't take place with Hayley and her friends sitting around getting plastered (which was my main problem, since all they did was drink).
This time out we have a real mystery to dig through, with plenty of threads that are twisted throughout, and watching them come together is quite intriguing. We also have a bit of a teaser here that gives us an indication of what will happen in future books, but I'm not going to give it away.
Danny is indeed a charmer, captivating all that he comes in contact with, men and women alike (aside from Mona), and watching Hayley try to figure out why he's really there is worth the read, because with Danny comes most of the rest of the problems they endure -- including a crazy ex-girlfriend and what she does makes me glad I don't know anyone like her.
But when we come to the ending it was quite a surprise, and putting the pieces together wasn't easy (although I did have part of it early on, I had to wait to see where the rest of it was going). The climax was decent, and the ending was quite satisfactory. Recommended.
More on Lee Hollis's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/lee-hollis/
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