Series: Forensic Instincts #2
Release Date: June 19, 2012
Buying Links: Amazon The Book Depository
Book Blurb (from goodreads):
"The man she loved is gone forever. The child she lives for could be next."Each day is a struggle for Amanda Gleason's newborn son as he battles a rare immune deficiency. Justin's best chance for a cure lies with his father, who was brutally murdered before Amanda even realized she carried his child.
Or was he?
One emailed photo changes everything, planting a seed of doubt that Amanda latches on to for dear life: a recent photo of a man who looks exactly like Paul. Could Justin's father be alive? The mother in her is desperate to find out. But tracking down a ghost when every second counts is not for amateurs.
"Forensic Instincts is the one team up for the challenge."
A behaviorist. A former navy SEAL. A techno-wizard. An intuitive. A retired FBI agent. A human-scent-evidence dog. Together they achieve the impossible, pushing ethical and legal boundaries whenever the ends justify the means.
The manhunt is on for the elusive father. Yet the further FI digs into his past, the more questions are raised about whether the man Amanda fell in love with ever really existed at all.
Dark secrets. Carefully crafted lies. From the congressional halls of Washington, D.C., to exclusive Hamptons manors, there are ruthless people who would stop at nothing to make Forensic Instincts forget about the man Amanda desperately needs to find.
Little do "they" realize that once Forensic Instincts takes the case, nothing will stop them from uncovering the shocking truth that transcends "The Line Between Here and Gone."
Reviewed By: Bea
Bea's Thoughts:
*Warning: If dying children are a trigger for you, consider skipping this book.*
I had some reservations about the first book in this series, "The Girl Who Disappeared Twice". Although not marked as being the first book in a new series, though it ended up being so, it often read like one while at other times it read like a book in the middle of a series. This book, the second in the series, doesn't suffer from an identity crisis. Kane gives enough info to fill in new readers without dragging down the story; it would read well as a stand-alone, I believe.
This story grabbed me from the first page and didn't let go. I stayed up until 3:11 AM reading it and had tears on my face when I finished. As you can see from the book blurb, the story is designed to tug at your heart strings, and it does, but there's also a mystery and the FI team grabs hold of it, while never losing sight of their main purpose: Find Justin's father and maybe save his life. There were some predictable parts but also some twists and turns. The tension in the story comes from many sources: the dying infant, the missing father, the familial conflicts, the conflict between the FI team and the FBI, the conflicts between the team members. That sounds like a boat load of conflict and tension but it doesn't drag the story down; there's also humor, hope, romance and action.
The story was a quick read but an engrossing one. I really liked the interaction between the FI team members, including their disagreements; they felt real, not sugarcoated or exaggerated. In fact, I think it's the characters, and not just the team members, along with the urgency of Justin's situation, that really grabbed and held my attention. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Justin's father were a bit complicated, unnecessarily so at times but it did provide for a reason for the tension between the FI team and the FBI, as well as adding another layer to the disappearance. It's not a perfect book, but a good one. I will definitely read the next one in the series.
I received a print ARC as part of a blog tour.
Andrea is currently on a blog tour for this book, you can follow along if you want. Click here for her schedule. Click here for short Q&A with Andrea and a brief excerpt from the book.
