Cold Cold Heart

Cold Cold Heart
Tami Hoag
Netgalley Review

Amazon Blurb -

Dana Nolan was a promising young TV reporter until a notorious serial killer tried to add her to his list of victims. Nearly a year has passed since surviving her ordeal, but the physical, emotional,and psychological scars run deep. Struggling with the torment of post-traumatic stress syndrome, plagued by flashbacks and nightmares as dark as the heart of a killer, Dana returns to her hometown in an attempt to begin to put her life back together. But home doesn’t provide the comfort she expects.

Dana’s harrowing story and her return to small town life have rekindled police and media interest in the unsolved case of her childhood best friend, Casey Grant, who disappeared without a trace the summer after their graduation from high school. Terrified of truths long-buried, Dana reluctantly begins to look back at her past. Viewed through the dark filter of PTSD, old friends and loved ones become suspects and enemies. Questioning everything she knows, refusing to be defined by the traumas of her past and struggling against excruciating odds, Dana seeks out a truth that may prove too terrible to be believed…

*****

Dana Nolan is a fighter.  She never thought of herself as one. The pretty popular blond girl who dated the high school football player, she was on her way to success.  A new reporter just getting started, when she's kidnapped by a sick killer who tortures and rapes her before trying to finish her off. Dana is the only survivor of this monster.   

After a year of convalescing and therapy she is headed back to her childhood home. Certainly not the happy go lucky gal any longer, she categorizes herself as "before Dana" and "after Dana".  She is struggling with PTSD, as well as a brain injury which results in her having no memory of the incident let alone if she shut the water or how to even navigate the home she grew up in.  Family and friends are strangers to her now.  

Police are wanting to talk to her about the possibility of her kidnapper also having something to do with her best friend from childhood, Casey Grant's disappearance. As she tries to recall what happened that last day the two were together, disturbing pieces start coming back.  Dana is finding she feels she can't trust anyone.  Solving this mystery may just be her undoing.    

This was a great book!  First time reading Tami, and I loved it.  I was trying to figure it out all the way to the end. If I have but one critique, it was Detective Hardy.  I know he was supposed to be rough and gruff, but I found him a bit to hard on Dana knowing full well the atrocities she endured. Read this book people if you love to be on the edge of your seat and guessing to the end!

 4 cannolis

The Killer Next Door

The Killer Next Door
Alex Marwood
book recieved in return
for far review

Amazon Blurb -

Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash—no credit check, no lease. It’s the kind of place you end up when you you’ve run out of other options. The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don’t know is that one of them is a killer. He’s already chosen his next victim, and he’ll do anything to protect his secret. 

*****

An eclectic group of tenants reside in a boarding home.  The landlord Roy Preece is a repulsive lech of a man who knows some of his tenants are between a rock and a hard-place and uses their situation as a tool to take advantage of them.

Lisa has come to live here on the run from a mobster whose money she has stolen quite accidentally, after witnessing henchmen delivering a deadly beatdown.   Hopping from place to place Lisa has been on the run from Tony Stott, barely one step ahead of him. Changing her name to Colette, she is hiding here from him while trying to care for her mom who is dying and in a home.

Tenants Vesta, a senior citizen who has lived there since she was a child with her parents, Hossein is seeking asylum, Gerard a divorced music teacher, Thomas a socially inept loner, and Cher, a 15 year old scrapper trying to stay out of the fostering system. Amongst them all is the Lover. One who ghoulishly collects women, preserving them, hoping each one is a better masterpiece than his last.

Their interaction and formed friendships make for an interesting story. In the sweltering heatwave they are dealing with plumbing problems and a stench of grand proportions.  Their landlord fixing the problem is not on his list of responsibilities to his tenants.  In a crazy twist that has them all working together, this group becomes an odd family unit.

I enjoyed this book. My only complaint, the detail was a bit much, and I wished for more focus on the main storyline itself and not on the side stories.  This had me pushing through at times, knowing the good stuff was coming. Alex Marwood has a great writing style, she weaves a tale that holds you in 

its grip.

3 1/2 cannolis