Strands of Truth
by Colleen Coble
on Tour September 9 – October 4, 2019
Synopsis:
Strands of Harper Taylor’s childhood are resurfacing—but will the truth save her . . . or pull her under?
Harper Taylor is used to being alone— after all, she grew up in one foster home after another. Oliver Jackson finally took her under his wing when she was a runaway teenager, and now Harper pours her marine biology knowledge into Oliver’s pen shell research. But she’s never stopped wishing for a family of her own.
So when a DNA test reveals a half-sister living just two hours away, Harper is both hopeful and nervous. Over warm cinnamon rolls, Harper and Annabelle find striking similarities in their stories. Is it just a coincidence that both their mothers died tragically, without revealing Harper and Annabelle’s father’s name?
Oliver’s son Ridge still sees Harper as a troubled teen even all these years later. But when Oliver is attacked, Ridge and Harper find themselves working together to uncover dangerous secrets that threaten to destroy them all. They must unravel her past before they can have any hope for the future.
Book Details:
Genre: Romantic Supsense
Published by: Thomas Nelson
Publication Date: September 10th 2019
Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 0718085906 (ISBN13: 9780718085902)
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
Read an excerpt:
Prologue
January 1990
St. Petersburg, Florida
Lisa ran to her Datsun Bluebird and jerked open the yellow door. Her pulse strummed in her neck, and she glanced behind her to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d tried not to show fear during the confrontation, but it was all she could do not to cry. She couldn’t face life without him.
She’d been on edge ever since yesterday.
Twilight backlit the treetops and highlighted the hanging moss. Instead of finding it beautiful, she saw frightening shadows and shuddered. She slid under the wheel and started the engine, then pulled out of her driveway onto the road.
She turned toward the Gulf. The water always calmed her when she was upset—and she had crossed upset moments ago and swerved into the scared zone.
Her belly barely fit under the wheel, but this baby would be born soon, then she’d have her figure back. She accelerated away from her home, a dilapidated one-story house with peeling white paint, and switched on her headlights.
The radio blared full of the news about the Berlin Wall coming down, but Lisa didn’t care about that, not now. She switched channels until she found Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ”playing, but even her favorite tune failed to sooth her shattered nerves. Could she seriously be murdered over this? She’d glimpsed madness in those eyes.
She pressed the brakes as she came to a four-way stop, but the brake pedal went clear to the floor. She gasped and pumped the pedal again. No response. The car shot through the intersection, barely missing the tail end of another vehicle that had entered it before her.
Hands gripping the steering wheel, she struggled to keep the car on the road as she frantically thought of a way to bring it to a stop that didn’t involve hitting another car or a tree. The baby in her belly kicked as if he or she knew their lives hung suspended in time.
“We’re going to make it, little one. We have to. I can’t leave you alone.” No one would love her baby if she died. Her mother couldn’t care for her child. She cared more about her drugs than anything else.
Lisa tried to tamp down her rising emotions, but she’d never been so frightened. The car fishtailed on the sandy road as she forced it back from the shoulder. Huge trees lined the pavement in a dense formation. Where could she drive off into relative safety? A field sprawled over on the right, just past the four-way stop ahead. If she made it through, it seemed the only place where they might survive.
Had the brakes been cut? What else could it be? She’d just had the car serviced.
Lisa approached the stop sign much too fast. The slight downhill slope had only accelerated the speed that hovered at nearly seventy. Her mouth went bone dry.
***
Taken from “Strands of Truth” by Colleen Coble. Copyright © 2019 by Colleen Coble. Used by permission of http://www.thomasnelson.com/.
My Review
“The right time for the truth is every minute of every day.”
Strands of Truth by Colleen Coble is an incredibly fascinating mystery that will have you working overtime trying to figure it all out. Such fun all the way through.
Two cold-case murders collide with the present when Harper Taylor is attacked not long after finding a half sister, Annabelle Rice, through a DNA analysis. What is going on? Finding out is certainly entertaining, but it will test your patience as you fly through the chapters. The clues to the old crimes and the new ones are parceled out in such a deliciously slow manner.
Flashbacks to old crimes can be tricky to navigate without annoying or confusing the reader, but Colleen Coble obviously knows what she’s doing. The pacing of both the modern story and the flashbacks are neither too slow nor too quick, and the author’s writing style is suburb.
Greed, revenge, and obsession are what’s on tap in Strands of Truth, and all three have no statute of limitations. When Harper discovers she has a half sister and that both their mothers were allegedly murdered, the strands of truth start to unravel. But at what cost? Someone is out to abduct one or both of these sisters, and trying to figure out why will leave you reading well into the night. Figuring out the truth will consume you until everything is finally revealed, one page at a time. Strands of Truth is one huge guessing game, for both the main characters and the reader, and that is what makes this book so fabulous and addicting. When you reach the ending chapters, and all the clues are falling into place, you will be completely stunned!
But a book labeled as a Romantic Suspense needs to have some romance, and Strands of Truth delivers, but not in the standard boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love kind of way. Just like the murder mystery, the romance aspect is unique and full of surprises and twists. Spoilers are no fun, so grab a copy of Strands of Truth by Colleen Coble and enjoy that sweet romance, heart-pounding suspense, and complex mystery for yourself. That ending, though. What a ride!
The author provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Author Bio:
Colleen Coble is a USA TODAY bestselling author and RITA finalist best known for her coastal romantic suspense novels, including The Inn at Ocean’s Edge, Twilight at Blueberry Barrens, and the Lavender Tides, Sunset Cove, Hope Beach, and Rock Harbor series.
Connect with Colleen online at:
colleencoble.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @ColleenCoble
Twitter – @colleencoble
Instagram – @colleencoble
Facebook – @colleencoblebooks!
Tour Participants:
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This book is in my upcoming pile, but after reading your review, it will be moving up in the pile.
You definitely need to read this one. The plot is unique and quite suspenseful.