Readsalot81

Posted as a guest review over at paranormalhaven.com

Midnight Lies is the second novel in Ella Grace’s Wildefire series and features Samantha Wilde, former homecoming queen turned cop.  I generally don’t read too much romantic suspense, but I found that I enjoyed her first book in the series, Midnight Secrets, and made the request for her second book.

Confident and capable detective Samantha Wilde is thrown for a loop when her lover, Dr. Quinn Braddock is accused of murdering his ex-wife.   Sam takes time off from her job to investigate on Quinn’s behalf, only to have him accuse of her not believing in him and ending the relationship.  Devastated, she heads back to Midnight, Alabama and goes to work with her sisters at the newly formed security agency.

The bond that exists between the sisters is one of my favorite parts of this series.  They don’t lie to one another, they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and they’re wholly supportive of one another even if they’re picking at each other. While the beginning of the book sets up Sam and Quinn’s relationship, in many ways the beginning felt extraneous and cumbersome.  The beginning is relevant to what happens at the end of the book, but it could’ve been pared down quite a bit to help with pacing issues.

When Quinn discovers that Sam went to bat for him, he heads straight to Midnight to beg forgiveness from Sam as well as another chance.  I have to say, I really didn’t care much for Quinn as a hero. He’s an unbelievable jerk to her in the beginning of the book, and his actions with his ex-wife don’t quite match how his character is constructed.  He’s set up as a very controlled and proud man, yet he still answers calls from his ex who jerked him around and cheated on him. When Sam turns him down, he decides to stick around in Midnight and ends up buying a house there in town.  As much as Sam is reluctant to give Quinn another chance, they do end up trying to work on things between the two of them.

There are a couple of subplots woven throughout the book that involve a mysterious good looking stranger that gives Sam odd vibes and Quinn is once again a suspect when a woman is found murdered, but these developments are inserted slowly throughout the pages, and are not very suspenseful to boot.  When Midnight Lies focuses on the sisters, I found myself more easily engaged with the text as opposed to the mysteries that lie around who murdered Quinn’s ex.  In any case, it was a pleasant enough read, but not very memorable or exciting.