Madison Westin arrives in Tarpon Cove to attend her aunt's funeral and take possession of the property she has inherited and finds that although she is the heir her aunt's lawyer and the guy he has running the vacation property have no intention of handing over the reigns. As Madison is about to find out they are not only dishonest but are also very dangerous. She'll need good friends to watch her back and hopefully she can make some fast. When I read the blurb for this book I was intrigued by the promise of a tough heroine and plenty of action so although it took me a while to get to it I was excited about this novel. The first paragraph was good and so I settled in to read.
There are things that worked for me: the villains are chilling and infuriatingly in control of the situation, the good guys aren't averse to breaking and entering, and the guys in between apparently don't know that playing both sides isn't the smartest thing to do. Madison herself is a woman with a past and is ready to reclaim her life, ready to take some risks and there are plenty of risks to take. Action scenes flowed very well and I was glad to see that things didn't always end well for the good guys and Madison didn't always escape unscathed. Another positive is that things did move along rather quickly and this wasn't a laborious read.
There are also things that didn't work for me: the dialogue was often robotic with no real segway between subjects and there were few details that helped create a living-breathing atmosphere for the scenes that would pull me in. The insta-lust between Madison and Zach was way too instant and way too intense, and the fact that she welcomed him into her life as quickly as she did and to the extent that she did was weird for me. Half the time I wished she would remember that she's only just met the guy and tell him to quit groping her in public. Another thing that didn't work for me was how the truth about the main villain was revealed, I felt it was too contrived.
I usually don't complain about blurbs because their whole job is to hook the reader and they rarely represent what the book is about with any degree of accuracy. I will complain here though: the blurb makes Madison out to be a go-getter who is on first-name basis with guns and who's going to "wrestle" her inheritance from the bad guys, but when I read the book I saw her as more of a scaredy-cat whith a swim in her pool at the top of her to-do list who needs others to help her with her problems, although she tries darn hard to break out of the pattern and therefore makes some audacious choices and actually sees some action.
All in all this isn't a bad read but while I think that Ms. Brown's writing has potential this book wouldn't be my first choice to recommend to a friend in search of a thrilling mystery.
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