Isn’t it awesome when you read your first book of a previously unread author and you can’t put it down? I had a double dose of that recently when I read books written by Karen Rose and Karen Robards.
Karen Rose is a romantic suspense author who creates plots with enough twists and turns to keep you on edge till the last moment. (And up till all hours of the night!) She doesn’t shy away from the ugly side of humanity and delves into the twisted minds of the villains in grisly detail. Her ‘good guys’ often get kidnapped, tortured, shot, stabbed, and beaten up, but she balances the suspense with romance and her books—thankfully—end on a happy note.
She writes series, each consisting of between 3 and 7 books with recurring characters, so, ideally, the books should be read in sequence to keep up with the characters’ lives, else it can be a tad overwhelming. ‘Did you miss me’ is the first book I read, and it grabbed me from the first page. Since then I have read ‘Have you seen her’, ‘Watch your back’ (my favourite so far) and ‘Monsters in the closet’.
My next read by Karen Rose will be ‘Closer than you think’. The hero in it has appeared in three of the books I’ve read so far and his description is quirky enough—white hair, dual-coloured irises and he’s always wearing a long, flapping coat—to entice me to search for it.
Karen Robards is the second Karen I’ve been introduced to. I picked up the 3rd book in her Dr. Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Stone quartet at the library and was hooked. My Kindle now contains all four of the books.
Charlie Stone is a sought-after expert in criminal pathology and a survivor of a serial killer rampage. Charlie can see what others do not, namely ghosts of the recently dead, and her romantic interest in the quartet is just that—a ghost. She witnesses the murder of Michael Garland, a convicted serial killer she’d just interviewed, and his ghost somehow attaches himself to her, and they become reluctant companions. Their interactions are hilarious at first, then transition to heart-sore desperation as they fall in love, because, obviously, the whole ghost thing is a huge stumbling block to their happy-ever-after. Then again, this is a story with a supernatural twist.
I haven’t read any other Karen Robard books—yet!—but she is on my watchlist for the library.