Jane Ellison has an uncanny ability to recognize people after seeing them just once. It may have been yesterday at the grocery store, or a year ago passing on a busy sidewalk, but she never forgets faces and features. Employed by Homeland Security to do just that, Jane scrutinizes faces in the crowd at Logan International, looking for terrorists, criminals and the like.
She’s working one such shift when she recognizes a face she never thought she’d see again – a woman Jane last saw years ago with her sister Kit – before Kit disappeared without a trace, with nothing but a bloody t-shirt ever recovered. Jane’s attempts to detain the woman – and her VIP companion Will Pease – result in the loss of her career and a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney, but Jane is more determined than ever to find out what happened to her sister that fateful night so long ago.
Meanwhile, at the ‘Love & Pease’ family compound in Cape Cod, Will Pease has returned home with the announcement that he intends to marry his adoptive sister Bella, much to the dismay of his family – especially his stepmother, Eve, who had yearned to see her daughter brought into the fold as Will’s wife. As plans for the extravagant wedding begin, it becomes apparent that this wedding bodes much more than the joining of a couple.
Jane, still determined to get to Bella to learn what she can of her sister’s disappearance, manages to find a rental on Cape Cod near the Pease compound. As she and her boyfriend Erik settle in, they’re joined by some colleagues of Erik’s, a husband and wife psychology duo, who seem to move right in and make themselves at home.
As I sit here and try to complete this review, I’m having difficulty, because there are so many tangents and undercurrents running through this novel, even as Jane seeks closure on Kit’s disappearance. From the Pease family’s unusual characters, to pre-nups, an aging star’s death, family stock options, entrapment, absolutely nothing and no one is as it may seems.
Filled with intrigue, mystery, red-herrings and ‘who-dun-it’ suspense, this is one hell of a read….having finished it, I’m very tempted to go back and re-read it, with my new perspective of the characters. I cant wait to read more from Ms. Strohmeyer!
Available on November 30th, 2021
I received this book as an Advance Reader Copy from #Netgalley & Harper Paperbacks, in exchange for an objective review.
Tropical Delusions...... 