Review: Whispers at Wongan Creek by Juanita Kees

Title: Whispers At Wongan Creek
Author: Juanita Kees

Read copy: eBook
Published: November 15, 2016
Publisher: Escape Publishing
ISBN: 1489221107
ISBN-13: 9781489221100

Wongan Creek has a second chance at life, but new possibilities unearth long-buried secrets...

Travis Bailey may as well be Wongan Creek. His family has farmed canola for generations, and he sometimes feels like he holds the community together with his bare, dirt-stained hands. Between caring for the farm, his orphaned niece and his elderly, ailing neighbour, he doesn't have time for himself. He doesn’t have time to fall in love.

Social worker Heather Penney is living on borrowed time. When her mother died of Motor Neurone Disease, she took the initial blood tests and now nothing is guaranteed, let alone a future with a family and a home and a child. Wongan Creek, and its resident protector, might be getting under her skin, but she can't afford to get attached.

But even as a new mine revitalises the small town, old secrets threaten resurface, and Travis and Heather find themselves fighting to save the farms and the futures of Wongan Creek's long-time residents—and possibly their own lives.

My rating:

***ARC provided by publisher through NetGalley***

The story was good and nicely written, the characters were interesting (if a little too stubborn and self-pitying on the heroine's side), the mystery or suspense was nicely drawn out and gripping at the appropriate times, but the story was a tad too long. By the half-mark it started dragging, and most of the scenes and/or inner monologues came off as fillers without much true purpose.

It would've worked better as a short story.

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3 stars, contemporary, contemporary romance, cowboys/ranchers/western, freebie, Juanita Kees, suspense/mystery/adventure/thriller

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