TO THE GRAVE – Carlene Thompson
St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 978-0-312-36075-7
August 2012
Romantic Suspense
Aurora Falls – Present Day
TO THE GRAVE opens with Renee Moreau Eastman. Renee is a beautiful woman who married James Eastman, Aurora Falls' pride and joy. But shortly after their marriage it was apparent Renee was not happy. After several affairs, Renee suddenly disappeared. Gossip was that James had something to do with her disappearance.
One year later, Renee is in a dark house, not sure why she decided to come back to Aurora Falls, and is bracing herself with alcohol. There has been a horrendous storm, and the house Renee is in has no power. But she is waiting, albeit impatiently, when she suddenly realizes she is not alone in the house. The person in the house with Renee is not a benevolent person, not the person she expected to meet. Renee is murdered by the person in the house.
Fast forward about a week. Catherine Gray has recently returned to Aurora Falls and shares the home she and her sister Marissa inherited from their parents. Catherine is in love with James Eastman and now that he is free, she and James have started a relationship. Catherine was away from Aurora Falls at college during most of James's marriage to Renee—and only has the gossip from her sister to know what life was like then. Catherine and Marissa drive out to an old fishing cottage the Eastmans own. Catherine is sure it will be the perfect spot for James to build a home—for himself and for them, as she is sure that someday James will ask her to marry him. The cottage's location is idyllic even if the cottage itself is a rundown nightmare. While photographing the area, Catherine falls into an old cistern and nearly drowns when she gets tangled up with a relatively fresh corpse. The corpse turns out to be that of Renee Eastman.
For years after Renee's disappearance, speculation ran rampant that James had something to do with her disappearance, but Catherine doesn't believe it; she loves James and always has. Okay, let me say when I say years, I think it has only been a year, though somehow James has been able to get a divorce based on desertion. But we won't quibble legalities. Timelines and legalities have no part in this story.
After the discovery, we realize that Catherine doesn't have complete faith in James no matter how much she protests to the contrary. Could James have killed Renee, or is it one of Renee's former lovers in Aurora Falls?
To be perfectly honest, I wanted to stop reading this book immediately. Catherine is an inane and inept heroine at best, and an idiot at worst. James? Who knows? We get his perspective but it's almost third party perspective. I think the biggest problem with the book is the author tried too hard to portray a “mysterious” death and gives us enough red herrings to hang the town. Catherine irritated me more often than not, and I honestly liked her sister Marissa better and would have liked to learn more about her relationship with the “Sheriff elect” than about Catherine and James. In addition, we have secondary characters who in my opinion, are either too shallow in description or have irrelevant information and do nothing to move the story forward.
This could have been a good who-dun-it. Instead it is a mish mash of irrelevant conversations, too much telling and not enough showing and basically fails on every level. I wanted to like this book. Romantic suspense is my very favorite genre. I tried to like this book. I tried to find one thing to recommend it. I guess its brief length is a recommendation. You won't have to lose too many hours of your life to get through it, but honestly, once the mystery was resolved at the end of the book I simply didn't care anymore. Unless you have infinite patience, I cannot recommend TO THE GRAVE.
Terrie Figueroa
