Swan Song

A burned down mansion and a missing young woman permeate the riveting finale of Elin Hilderbrand’s glitzy Nantucket series of novels.

With high drama and a boatload of mystery, Elin Hilderbrand (The Five Star Weekend, Golden Girl, The Perfect Couple) reels in the stunning final installment in her Nantucket-based series of novels. Readers will savor Swan Song, as it nostalgically brings back characters from former books and adds a host of dynamic new ones.

 

When enigmatic, middle-aged, island newcomers, Bull and Leslee Richardson--a “hot commodity” power couple--purchase a lavish, 22-million-dollar oceanfront property, they enlist the help of Colleen “Coco” Coyle, an aspiring screenwriter in need of a job. Coco serves as their “personal concierge,” assisting their quest to integrate into island society culture. Coco is befriended by Kacy—a dedicated nurse from California who recently broke up with her girlfriend. She returns home to visit her Police Chief father, Ed Kapenash, who has suffered some health challenges and is now facing retirement.

 

When the Richardson mansion mysteriously burns down and Coco goes missing on the same day, many questions are suddenly raised. A police investigation coupled with town intrigue slowly starts to reveal the true identity of the Richardsons and their modus operandi. In doing so, spicy details are also revealed regarding those in their orbit. This includes socially connected friends, a real estate agent, an architect, a boat captain, sommelier, a masseuse and others.

 

Romance and island glitz infuse Hilderbrand’s spellbinding 30^th novel that packs a juicy, suspenseful wallop for devoted readers of her last 29 books and rare latecomers to the captivating Hilderbrand ‘brand.’

 

Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand

Little, Brown and Company / Hachette Book Group, $30.00 hardcover, 9780316258876, 384 pages

Publishing Date: June 11, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (July 5, 2024), link HERE 

Bridges Burned: A Zoe Chambers Mystery

Zoe Chambers is a paramedic and deputy coroner who works hard "to find answers for the dead" in Vance Township, a tight-knit Pennsylvania farm community. In her first two books, Circle of Influence and Lost Legacy, Zoe tracked the killer of a prominent town board member and investigated the suicide of a local farmer. In book three, Bridges Burned, Zoe stops a man from re-entering his burning house in an attempt to save his wife. When the raging fire proves fatal, Zoe empathizes with the grieving, homeless, unemployed widower, Holt Farabee, and his ten year-old daughter, Maddie. She offers lodging to the pair in the dilapidated 1850s farmhouse she shares with her aging, infirm landlady. In exchange, Holt, who has handyman skills, agrees to do odd jobs.

Zoe soon forges a bond with Holt and identifies with Maddie, as Zoe lost her father when she, too, was a young girl. But when Police Chief Pete Adams--a man whom Zoe has kept at a romantic arm's length for years--learns of the living arrangement, he's not pleased as his investigation is harvesting suspicions about the deadly fire and Holt's past. When Pete tries to caution Zoe, she refuses to listen. Might Zoe's stubbornness lead to further peril? 

Small town dynamics color a suspenseful, well-plotted storyline rife with red herrings that reveal how seemingly mundane lives are much more complicated and connected than first believed. But it's Annette Dashofy's likeable heroine--her vulnerabilities and deepening challenges--that makes for another winning installment in this series.

Burning Bridges by Annette Dashofy

Henery Press, $14.95 Paperback, 9781941962398, 288 pp  

Publication Date: April 7, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/10/15), link HERE