If you’re looking for a story with weak women, this one is not for you. Never Tell follows three forces of nature, their strength, in many ways, stemming from their brokenness. Yet each battles different ghosts and in no way becomes copies of the others. Each woman is unique and possesses her own voice and way of fighting the hand she’s been dealt.
With little more than a name and place to direct her, Thea Reed arrives in Pleasant Valley to look for the mother who left her on the steps of an orphanage years earlier. When her search leads her to a mental asylum, Thea utilizes her skill as a post-mortem photographer to access the place. But her hunt unearths more than she bargained for. It reawakens the ghost of Misty Wayfair, a woman murdered decades earlier who townsfolk claim haunts the area and especially one family in particular.
I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this book. Looking at the title, I was expecting a Hallmark movie plot. While there is sufficient drama to satisfy any soap opera enthusiast, it is all integral to the story and to the mystery (and not annoying for us non-soap opera enthusiasts). It’s a thriller, it’s a drama, and it’s a great gothic story.
For Eve Dallas, dead bodies happen all the time. She’s well known for being the cop you want on the job when someone you know or love has been murdered. But it’s not often that the dead body happens as a result of an explosion that takes out executives from a major corporation. It’s even less common for another executive to be the person who is to blame for the explosion.
Hayley Snow is a food critic living in Key West, FL. In addition to her writing responsibilities at Key Zest Magazine, she has agreed to help her mother’s catering company. When she lands a big gig (the Havana/Key West Conference) it’s just what her mother’s fledgling business needs to boost her bookings.