Saturday, February 10, 2018

Review: Monster in the Closet by Karen Rose

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Title: Monster in the Closet
Series: Karen Rose's Interconnecting Books, Baltimore, MD
Author: Karen Rose
Read copy: Mass Market Paperback
Published: August 29, 2017
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 0399586768
ISBN-13: 9780399586767

A mother is dead, and now her killer hunts the child that witnessed the brutal crime...

Private Investigator Clay Maynard locates missing children for clients, but has nearly given up hope of finding his own daughter, cruelly stolen from him by his ex-wife twenty-three years ago.

Equine therapist Taylor Dawson has chosen to intern at Daphne Montgomery-Carter's stables so that she can observe the program's security director—her father, Clay Maynard. Trying to reconcile the wonderful man she's getting to know with the monster her mother always described, Taylor never expects to become the target of a real monster, the man who murdered the mother of the little girls she works with at the stable. Neither does she expect to fall for Ford Elkhart, Daphne's handsome son, who is dealing with his own demons. As family and friends gather for a wedding, Taylor starts to imagine a permanent life in Baltimore.

But not if the real monster gets to her first...

My rating:

A monster killed the mother of two little girls, Jazzie and Janie with Jazzie being witness to who the killer was. Unfortunately, the kid hasn't spoken since that terrible day...Until she meets equine therapist, Taylor Dawson who's come all the way from California to enter the internship at Healing Hearts with Horses at Daphne Montgomery-Carter's stables.

Taylor also has an ulterior motive for being where she is...She wants to know her real father, the man she'd been taught to fear and hate by her mother, Clay Maynard, since her mother had confessed that the fear and hate had been based on a lie on her death bed.

But father and daughter might not get a long reunion, since the killer is now gunning for Taylor in fear of what little Jazzie might have seen...And said.


First of all, the blurb is off. A lot.

Second of all, I wasn't that convinced by this book. Yes, the suspense was good, but unfortunately we knew who the killer was from the start, removing the aspect of anticipation and guessing. And the motive was rather flimsy.

And we got to revisit old friends, from J.D. to Clay, and even Deacon made an appearance (along with the character traits that made him Deacon and were so conspicuously missing in his own book). It was nice seeing them all again, revisit their dynamics, learn some news, and have a really good time in their company. Yet the new addition to the "family" didn't convince me.
Taylor Dawson, Clay's long-lost daughter, left me rather ambiguous. I didn't really like her, and I didn't really not like her. She was an entity, an additional character to the story, a catalyst for the suspense, and features heavily in more weepy scenes (which tugged at the heartstrings and caused some leakage mostly because of the others involved in the scenes), but that was pretty much it.

The fact she was proficient in hand-to-hand and was a good shot felt more like a deus ex machina moment than the result of the big lie her Californian family has been living. And her so-called budding romance between her and Ford (Daphne's son) was more than flimsy. It felt more like getting-back-on-the-horse for Ford and exploring-new-territory for Taylor.
At least they decided to take it slow and see how it goes (after only knowing each other a couple of days) instead of going down the completely unbelievable route of being in love for life.

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