The Last Breath

November 10, 2014
Belle's multi-layered page-turner explores justice, forgiveness, and guilt through the eyes of a convicted murderer's daughter. Sixteen years ago, Ray Andrews was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murder of his wife, Ella Mae. Near the end of a battle with terminal cancer, Ray is granted compassionate leave to live out his last days under house arrest, sending the entire town of Rogersville, Tenn., into an uproar. Ray's youngest daughter, Gia, who has never been fully convinced of his guilt, has left her globe-trotting job as a disaster relief specialist and returned to care for him. Coming back to small-town Appalachia to care for a dying parent would be hard enough without protestors on the front lawn and a chilly reception from an older brother and sister who want nothing to do with the whole situation. As she starts to dig into her family's past, Gia uncovers a wealth of new facts about the night of Ella Mae's murder that further complicates her feelings on the incident. With a keen sense of setting and a cast of well-drawn characters, Belle delivers a fresh premise with a few novel twists. Flashbacks to Ella Mae's last days add an additional level of complexity. Unfortunately, some twists are more believable and organic than others, and the final scenes take a slightly hackneyed action-movie turn that feels at odds with the rest of the story. Nevertheless, Belle's debut is thoroughly satisfying.

September 1, 2014
A small Tennessee mountain town is awash in sex and scandal in Belle's first novel. Gia Andrews, a disaster relief worker, is also a convicted murderer's daughter. Her father, Ray, was convicted of killing his wife and Gia's stepmother, Ella Mae, and sentenced to life in prison. But Ray is dying, and prison officials are releasing him on compassionate grounds; Gia's uncle Cal, a prominent lawyer, has recruited her to return home from Kenya to care for her dad in his home in Rogersville. Despite the fact that she hasn't seen her father since she left many years ago, she returns, believing her brother, Bo, and sister, Lexi, will help her, but she finds that neither wants anything to do with their father. Her nearest allies turn out to be the home-care worker Uncle Cal has hired, Fannie, and the new man she meets, a bar-and-grill owner named Jake. When Gia meets a law professor planning to write a book about wrongful convictions, he tells her he believes Ray didn't kill Ella Mae and that Cal, who was Ray's attorney, didn't mount much of a defense. After looking into these allegations, Gia discovers her stepmother had an affair with another man and wonders whether her father could be innocent after all. While trying to unravel the mystery of who really killed Ella Mae, things heat up between Gia and Jake, and suddenly the mystery takes a whole new direction. Belle's a smooth writer whose characters are vibrant and truly reflect the area where the novel is set, but the plot-while clever-takes a back seat to Gia's and Ella Mae's separate, but equally steamy, sexual exploits. Thriller fans will find so much space devoted to Gia and Jake's sexual acrobatics that little time is left for the plot to develop.

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