Dead Girl Running
Cape Charade #1
by Christina Dodd
I have three confessions to make:
1. I've got the scar of a gunshot on my forehead.
2. I don't remember an entire year of my life.
3. My name is Kellen Adams...and that's half a lie.
Girl running...from a year she can't remember, from a husband she prays is dead, from homelessness and fear. Tough, capable Kellen Adams takes a job as assistant manager of a remote vacation resort on the North Pacific Coast. There amid the towering storms and the lashing waves, she hopes to find sanctuary. But when she discovers a woman's dead and mutilated body, she's soon trying to keep her own secrets while investigating first one murder...then another.
Now every guest and employee is a suspect. Every friendly face a mask. Every kind word a lie. Kellen's driven to defend her job, her friends and the place she's come to call home. Yet she wonders--with the scar of a gunshot on her forehead and amnesia that leaves her unsure of her own past--could the killer be staring her in the face?
❃❃ Dead Girl Running releases April 24th ❃❃
Momma Says: 1 star⭐
I've heard great things about Christina Dodd but had never had the chance to read one of her books, so I was excited to dive into this one. The blurb alone was filled with mystery and certainly looked like something right up my alley. Unfortunately, the reality didn't quite match up to my expectations. There is mystery, but there were just too many things that pulled me out of the story. Not only do we get information by way of info dumps, but the descriptions of people in Kellen's life read like military or police records. Given Kellen's background, it is understandable to a degree that she would think this way, but it felt more like reading a vital statistics record than a story. The timeline moves back and forth between Kellen's past and present and in most cases, this doesn't bother me, but the jumps were so frequent that they became tedious and at times, confusing. These are things that I could've overlooked had the mystery drawn me in, but so many things were completely over the top and unbelievable that I found myself in a state of incredulity by the time I read the final page. I realize that with fiction we have to allow for some suspension of disbelief, but this one was just too much for this reader. I won't go into the details on those so as not to give spoilers, but suffice it to say that given my experience with this first in the Cape Charade series will be my last.
❃❃ARC provided by NetGalley and Harlequin
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