About the author

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries.  The twelfth installment in the Mac Faraday Mystery series, Candidate for Murder, was released in June 2016.  Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry (WV).  Visit the author’s website or connect with her on Twitter.

About the book

Joshua’s eldest son, Joshua “J.J.” Thornton Jr., has graduated at the top of his class from law school and returns home to spend the summer studying for the bar exam. However, to Joshua’s and Cameron’s shock and dismay, J.J. moves into the main house at Russell Ridge Farm, the largest dairy farm in the Ohio Valley, to rekindle a romance with Suellen Russell, a onetime leader of a rock group who’s twice his age. Quickly, they learn that she has been keeping a deep dark secret.

The move brings long-buried tensions between the father and son to the surface. But when a brutal killer strikes, the Lovers in Crime must set all differences aside to solve the crime before J.J. ends up in the cross hairs of a murderer.

Review

It’s was an interesting experience, reading a book by Lauren Carr that wasn’t part of the Mac Faraday Mystery series (check out Cancelled Vows and Candidate for Murder).  The voice was quite familiar, as was the style.  But the book was about a completely new set of characters, and however endearing the crowd in Mac Faraday’s world are, it was a refreshing change.

This is the first book in the Lovers in Crime series that I am reading, although it is actually the third one in the series.  It felt however that I was reading a standalone novel in that no information was missing for me to figure everything out, and no information was provided in such a clunky way that it came off as a poorly hidden synopsis.  Knowing that Carr provides the same information in a similar manner in her Mac Faraday books, I know that this is a reflection of the skill behind the pen (well, the keyboard, but you know what I mean.)

On a personal note, there is something about the Mac Faraday series that I prefer over the Lovers in Crime series.  Don’t get me wrong; I will still follow the latter and pick up new volumes as they come out, but if I had to choose, I would totally go for a Faraday.  That being said, if the rest of this series is anything like Killer in the Band, I will continue reading them.  The action doesn’t stop, the book isn’t all fluff, the pages get devoured, and the satisfaction is endless.

Thank you to iReads Book Tours for providing
a copy of this book for me to review!