Format: Paperback, 336 pages
Release Date: March 9, 202
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Psychological
They’re hunting a killer so silent, so invisible, that his unspeakable crimes are the only proof he exists.
A car submerged in a remote pond. The bodies of two girls strapped into their seats. The mystery of their mother, vanished without a trace, leads Gwen Proctor and Kezia Claremont into dangerous territory.
On the surface, Gwen’s life is good—two children approaching adulthood, a committed partner, and a harrowing past dead and gone. But that past is attracting the attention of someone invisible…and unstoppable. Trouble’s just beginning. So is the body count in this backwoods Tennessee town.
As threats mount and Gwen’s hunted by an enemy who pulls all the strings, Kezia has her back. But working to solve these vicious and unreasonable crimes will expose them both to a killer they can’t for the life of them see coming.
Heartbreak Bay is the Fifth installment in author Rachel Caine's Stillhouse Lake series. The story is once again told in multiple narratives: Private Investigator Gwen Proctor, her significant other and flight instructor Sam Cade, and Detective Kezia Claremont. This story begins with a heartbreaking scene. After a car is found submerged in Stillhouse Lake, Detective Claremont gets the call. For Kezia, this is especially heartbreaking when she learns that twin baby girls are still strapped into their car seats and their mother is nowhere to be found.
The scene would be harrowing and emotional experience for anyone to deal with let alone a trained professional. But Kez just found out that she's pregnant and hasn't had time to tell Javier yet since he's off with the Marine Corp on training maneuvers. As the car is dragged out of the lake, Kezia puts a name to the person she needs to find immediately. Kezia realizes right away that something is horribly wrong. There’s nothing normal about two drowned innocent children. After learning the name of the mother of the twins, the question now becomes whether or not she was abducted and needs saving, or is she perhaps criminally responsible for the girls’ deaths?
With help from Gwen, who has moved her family to Knoxville to be closer to her job, Kezia searches for the mother of the babies only to be lead to a missing person search where yet another body is found. Are both cases connected, or a false lead to throw Kezia off the trail? For Gwen, as a mother on a 17-year-old (Lanny) and a 15-year-old (Connor) who has been through literal hell over the course of this series, she can't help feeling emotionally distraught. Her children are slowly becoming adults, especially Atlanta who seems ready to go out on her own and out of her mother’s control. The kids are constantly targeted by trolls and vindictive people who want to hurt them because of who their father was.
For a long time now, Gwen has lived in a state of hypervigilance and for obvious reasons. She’s tried to track down the trolls who have been trying to make her life miserable and has done a good job overall. She didn’t realize what a real monster Melvin was and how many people thought he was innocent and that she was the guilty one until she starts getting unwanted letters, kids writing disgusting stuff on her home, kids making her own children’s lives miserable, and even the local police not trusting Gwen fully. The author then raises the stakes when Gwen is once again targeted by a menace to society who believes she is just as guilty as her former serial killer husband and he intends to make sure she pays for what he claims she did.
Even though Gwen has been arrested several times now, she's never formally been charged with murdering anyone. While Gwen is trying to protect her family from another menace, she discovers that her ex, Melvin, has many different acolytes just waiting to pick up his call for action and make Gwen's life unbearable. Forget the fact that her children are innocent in all of this. This time out, Gwen and Kezia must face almost certain death alone to end the vicious campaign from a man who has nothing to lose and everything to gain if he is the one to finally bring an end to Gwen being an innocent.
Sam is not only training pilots but is now the adoptive father of Lanny and Connor. Sam isn’t exactly unscathed by the events of Gwen’s past. When a mysterious caller asks him how he can live with a serial killer’s wife, Sam has choices to make. He can stand with Gwen or dig deeper into the caller’s agenda and reason for singling him out or walk away forever. Unless we’ve forgotten, Sam was once one of the worst aggressors against Gwen, until he met her and the kids and realized nothing is what it seems, and now it seems as though their relationship is even stronger than before.
Heartbreak Bay is a bittersweet ending to the Stillhouse Lake series as the author passed away back in November of 2020. She was fighting cancer, and her assistant and publisher knew that if she lived, the series would live as well. Unfortunately, she didn’t. I have no knowledge whether or not the author was able to finish writing other stories before her death. All I know is that we, as fans and readers, should be prepared that this is her final piece de resistance. In many ways, the title of this book is perfect. It is not only the culmination of where the story ends, but where the story takes Gwen to fight her final battle.
i love her work. she will be missed
ReplyDeletesherry @ fundinmental