Saturday, June 8, 2013

Review - Her Last Breath

Title: Her Last Breath
Author: Linda Castillo
Publisher: Minotaur Books (June 18, 2013)
Format: Trade Paperback; Pgs 308
Genre: Suspense
Source: Amazon Vine
Series: Kate Burkholder #5

love this series – with multiple storylines and relationship issues that do not dwell too long on one specific moment, but culminate in an ending of one, and a cliffhanger for another.

Kate Burkholder is called out to a horrific accident. A truck has slammed into an Amish buggy splintering it and leaving lives in ruin. The driver has left the scene and with very little evidence remaining, Kate is trying to reconstruct the incident so she will have something to give to her childhood friend, the wife and mother to those involved.

How do you tell the one person that made your young life tolerable that her life is forever shattered? Kate, the police chief of Painters Mill, must make that next of kin notification. She does not want to leave her friend – what if this was not an accident and someone actually set out to kill the young family? Kate goes beyond what her department and the town authorizes, and takes it upon herself to protect her friend, that is until one night when things change. She sees a man sneaking onto Mattie Bontranger’s property and that is when the lies begin. What is Mattie not telling her?

This is not Kate’s only problem. Two young boys are exploring the old grain elevator. When one falls through some old boards, it is not grain that he finds, but the skeleton of Daniel Lapp. This is bad; this is very very bad for Kate. If you have read the previous books, you know that Daniel Lapp was the boy that ruined Kate’s life and was the reason that she left the Plain Life. Kate is in a panic and begins to feel that her life is closing in on her.

With the Kate Burkholder books, there is also a romantic twist. Well, as romantic as Kate will allow her relationship with Tomasetti to get. This time he has really shocked her. He has purchased a home, a nice quiet place away from the turmoil of her life in Painters Mill, and now he has asked her to move in with him. This will be either the perfect solution for her, or the final straw that will have her running in the opposite direction.

I really enjoy this series. The main storyline unfolds and then twists back onto itself in a way that makes you wonder if you have the right person, all the while continuing forward on previous plotlines from prior books and characters making you speculate where Linda Castillo is going in the future.

No comments: