Review: Crimson River

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Lyla Eden has spent the last few years sitting on the sidelines, watching her siblings fall in love.

Meanwhile, she's married to her job. It's on her hundredth consecutive workday that her sister stages an intervention, kicking Lyla out of her own coffee shop. With nothing else to do, Lyla sets out on her favorite hiking trail.

It's there that she spots a man washing blood from his hands in a stream. One moment she's staring at the jagged scar on his face. The next, his hand is around her throat. But by some miracle, he lets her go.

Shaken to her core, Lyla reports the incident to the local police. Two days later, Vance Sutter arrives in town, armed with endless questions and a tarnished badge.

Vance may be ruggedly handsome but he's as mysterious as the man he's hunting. And he'll be gone from Quincy in a blink. Yet Lyla's crush is impossible to stop.

No matter how hard Vance tries to ignore it, there's no denying the chemistry between them. And avoiding Lyla is not an option. After years of chasing dead ends, she's his only lead to closing the case that haunts his career. So together, they'll retrace her steps.

To find the scarred man she met beside a crimson river.

Genre: romantic suspense

Publication date: November 2023

Mature content: yes

Review: Crimson River is the fifth book in The Edens series and in terms of timeline more or less closely follows Indigo Ridge, Juniper Hill, Garnet Flats and Jasper Vale. 

While I did love it, it's not the best in the series (so far, Jasper Vale is still my favorite) - because for me, the beginning of Lyla and Vance's story makes no sense: no woman who's been victim of a brutal attack recently will get involved and have (unprotected) sex with a virtual stranger just because he tells her he's a police officer intent on hunting down the man who originally attacked. And then only a week later she suddenly worries and starts looking for confirmation of his ID... 

So while their romance is hot and heartwarming and we are back to plots with some suspense thrown in, the detail above threw me a bit off right from the first pages and that's why Crimson River isn't getting five stars like Jasper Vale.

See it on Amazon

Please note that even though technically each book in the series can be read as a stand alone, my advice remains to read them all in the correct order - if not, after a while you'll lose track of all the secondary characters.

Happy readings!

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Start the Series with Book 1