Dead Girl Running

February 26, 2018
Bestseller Dodd’s new thriller takes place on the dark, rainy North Pacific Coast. Kellen Adams is running away from a past she can’t completely remember. After a stint in the army, she becomes the assistant manager of an isolated resort in Virtue Falls, Wash., where she makes an effort to hire fellow veterans. She’s comfortable leading the hotel team until she discovers a woman’s mutilated body on the property. With Sheriff Kateri Kwinault (familiar from The Woman Who Couldn’t Scream) not close enough to provide consistent support, Kellen reluctantly investigates the hotel staff and guests to determine whether they might be behind the gruesome murder. She doesn’t know whether to trust a guest claiming to be a government agent investigating a smuggling ring; the hotel’s security adviser, who is hiding in bushes hoping to catch a smuggler in the act; or the hotel owner’s nephew, who unexpectedly arrives to lend his assistance. A series of twists and turns lead to a surprise ending, but this story won’t completely satisfy readers seeking the emotional payoff of Kellen’s discovery of her lost past. Still, Dodd does a masterly job of maintaining suspense. Agent: Mel Berger, William Morris Endeavor.

Author Christina Dodd always delivers, and this audiobook is no exception. Former Army captain Kellen Adams is a woman who can't recall a whole year of her life and has more than her share of secrets, including a scar on her head from a gunshot wound. In Maine, where she is keeping a low profile and running a hotel, murder comes calling, and it isn't Kellen's first such experience. Narrator Vanessa Johansson performs every voice of Kellen's ex-army buddies with just the right accent. Her delivery pulls the listener into a story filled with plot twists and turns aplenty. Johansson is equally spot-on, sometimes eerily so, with Kellen's voice and the voices of the secrets that haunt her. This is an audio experience that grabs listeners, pulls them in, and takes them for a heck of a ride. A.C.P. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

February 15, 2018
When a Washington coastal resort that unwittingly plays host to an international smuggling ring comes under siege, the manager has to sort friend from foe.Kellen Adams' life is a trail of secrets, and even she doesn't know what happened for a full year of it. That missing memory is the line between her past as a helpless, abused wife and her more recent past as a tough, skilled Army officer. Her present consists of working as an assistant manager at Yearning Sands Resort. January is off-season, so owners Leo and Annie Di Luca take a vacation. As soon as they leave and Kellen is in charge, a corpse is found on the property, creating a domino effect of violent events that indicate a smuggling ring is using the remote shoreline to bring stolen artifacts into the country; it's hard to tell whether it's a patron or an employee who's running the show. With a handful of potential suspects and a younger Di Luca sent in to help with security, Kellen has her hands full, but the stakes are getting higher. Maximilian Di Luca makes her uncomfortable, and the guest who claims to be an author is clearly hiding something. But so is Kellen. She knows she's in danger, but when threats from the past and present intertwine, it's hard to tell which is worse. Dodd weaves popular characters from her Virtue Falls and Bella Terra series together, which will delight her fans. However, while she brings her typical intelligence and inventiveness to the plot, there's a bit too much going on, and a couple of twists strain credibility.A vivid, creative--though slightly far-fetched--romantic suspense novel.

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Starred review from February 15, 2018
Disgruntled employees, picky guests, unreliable vendorsKellen Adams, assistant manager of the Yearning Sands resort, can handle any of those issues without breaking a sweat, but a corpse is something different. Kellen hoped the bones a scavenger dragged onto the resort's grounds might be ancient news, but it turns out the mutilated body belonged to Priscilla Carter, the former assistant manager at Yearning Sands. Now, as if Kellen doesn't have enough on her plate trying to run an exclusive, luxury resort, she also must guess if one of her fellow employees (or even a guest) might be a homicidal maniac. Worse yet, her own tightly held secrets could very well start spilling out, leaving everyone around her wondering exactly what Kellen might be capable of doingor may already have donewhen push comes to shove. No one does high-stakes, high-voltage suspense quite like Dodd (The Woman Who Couldn't Scream, 2017), and her latest flawlessly written novel is another guaranteed keep-the-lights-on-late read. From the unforgettable heroine with a past to the incisively etched cast of secondary characters to the brilliantly imaginative plot, Dodd is at her most wildly entertaining, wickedly witty best.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)