April 1, 2019
Repetitious dialogue and uninspiring characters mar this tale of domestic discord from Cole (Saving Beck). Right after Tessa Taylor drops two of her children in Atlanta for their annual three-week visit with her parents, she turns around for the five-hour drive back to Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., to meet her husband, Ethan, at their vacation home. The couple live the high life—he’s an architect who travels a lot for work; she owns Blush, a successful organic cosmetics company. But Ethan is stuck in New York, and Hurricane Fiona is barreling down on Florida. At the beach house, Tessa discovers proof on Ethan’s iPad that he’s having an affair with a 26-year-old nursing student, Lindsey Vale. Fuming with “inky red rage,” Tessa pretends to be Nathan and sends a message to Lindsey inviting her to come over, strip, and handcuff herself to their bed. (Tessa gave Nathan handcuffs the previous Valentine’s Day.) The setup is more suited to a short story than a novel, and the hurricane turns out to be just hot air—a gimmick, not a threat. Fans of the author’s romance novels will best appreciate this outing.
May 1, 2019
Cole (Saving Beck, 2018) returns with a tightly written novel full of high emotion and characters who live in the gray area between righteous and corrupt. Tessa Taylor is a busy executive and she's looking forward to spending some kid-free time with her husband, Ethan. But when Tessa gets home from dropping off her children at the sitter's, she's surprised by two things: the category 4 hurricane sweeping its way toward her, and the naked picture of an unfamiliar woman on Ethan's iPad. Furious and intent on revenge, Tessa makes the desperate, reckless decision to lure her husband's mistress, Lindsey, to the house. The chapters alternate between Tessa's and Lindsey's perspectives, with flashbacks revealing how Ethan and Lindsey met while, in the present, the women fight each other and the storm. Cole never lets up on the tension as one reveal leads to another, building to a dramatic climax like the hurricane itself. Recommended for fans of domestic-strife tales and those who love a good pulse-pounding thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)