Review: The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen

 

The Spy Coast (The Martini Club #1) by Tess Gerritsen

Publication Date: March 18th 2025 by Thomas & Mercer and Brilliance Audio

Pages: 363

Audio Book Length: 8hrs 59min

Narrators: Hillary Huber 

Source: Publisher & Purchased Audio (Kindle Unlimited)

Rating: ★★★★

Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible | Goodreads

My Thoughts:

Maggie and her former CIA friends, Declan, Ben, Ingrid and Lloyd assist police chief, Jo Thibadeau in her search for a missing girl.

 

Susan, her teenage daughter, Zoe, and her husband Ethan are gathering at his family’s summer cottage in Maine for the memorial of Ethan’s dad. Susan isn’t very comfortable with Ethan’s wealthy family, but she’ll put on a brave face for her husband. However, shortly after their arrival, Zoe doesn’t come home after spending the day with a local girl.

 

The police zero in on Luther, Maggie’s neighbor and friend, as the prime suspect.  

 

I loved The Spy Coast and so I was eager to dive into The Summer Guests. Maggie and the gang dive right in to help find Zoe and clear Luther’s name. In the last book Jo wasn’t too thrilled when The Martini Club (Maggie & friends) horned in on her investigation, but she’s more accepting of their help in this case. I was happy to see them on the same side and Jo slowly becoming one of the gang.

 

There were several red herrings that kept me on my toes! I was so worried about Zoe and whether she’d be found and felt Susan’s rising panic as the days went by! Ethan’s family was something else!

 

I alternately read and listened to the story, and I recommend either version. The audio version was a treat as Hillary Huber, one of my favorite narrators performs, enhancing the story, and bringing the characters to life!

4 Stars

Book Description:

From New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen comes a chilling follow-up to The Spy Coast, plunging the Martini Club into the search for a missing teen—with a startling connection to their own pasts.

When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything.

Maggie survived, thanks to her wits and the collective intelligence of the Martini Club, the circle of ex-CIA friends in her cocktail-sipping book club. Their handiwork, however, caught the attention of young police chief Jo Thibodeau. Now Jo and her neighborhood ex-spies have an uneasy alliance.

After a teenager vanishes—and Maggie’s neighbor becomes the prime suspect—she joins the investigation, determined to prove her friend’s innocence. But the girl’s wealthy family pushes for an arrest. And when authorities discover a long-dead corpse in a nearby pond, the case becomes doubly complicated, with unthinkable ties to long-buried secrets.

As Jo grapples with two unexplained mysteries, the Martini Club races to uncover the truth behind shadowy secrets…before more lives are lost.

Review: Into the Dark by Karen Rose

Into the Dark (Romantic Suspense #23) by Karen Rose

Publication Date: November 26th 2019 by Berkley

Pages: 621 Audio Length: 21 Hrs and 21 mins
Narrator: Hillary Huber
Source: Publisher & Audible Purchase
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Audible

About the book:

Michael Rowland is not your typical teenager. Deaf from birth, he’s always looked out for his five-year-old brother, Joshua. When his stepfather comes after Joshua, Michael takes the child and runs. He’s determined to protect his brother at all costs, even if that means making himself vulnerable to a danger he can’t hear coming. And the danger intensifies when Michael witnesses a stranger kill his stepfather.

Desperate and afraid, the boys have nowhere else to go but to Joshua’s soccer coach, journalist and ex-Army ranger Diesel Kennedy. When Diesel sees that Michael is injured, he takes them to see Dr. Dani Novak—not only because she’s fluent in American Sign Language, but because he’s drawn to her and everything she stands for. She never refuses Diesel’s requests—because she, too, feels their connection—but she resists him for reasons she doesn’t want to confess.

When Dani and Diesel learn that Michael saw the face of his stepfather’s killer, they fear for his safety. But they quickly discover that it’s even worse than they feared: They may have a serial killer on their hands—and all signs point to Michael as the next target.

My Thoughts:

Fourteen-year-old Michael witnesses the murder of his stepfather.  His stepfather was a pedophile and abused Michael, so I wasn’t too broken up over his death. My heart truly went out to Michael growing up with a neglectful, selfish mother.  She didn’t even bother to learn sign language even though Michael was deaf from birth. On top of all that, she marries an abusive asshole leaving her kids vulnerable! 

When the police start to investigate the murder, the killer realizes he may have left a witness, so Michael and his five year-old-brother are in danger.  That’s when Joshua’s soccer coach, Diesel, gets involved.  Diesel is a coach in his free time to give back to the community and help kids out, but he’s mainly a hacker for The Ledger, an investigative news/website.

When Diesel realizes Michael is injured and these kids may be victims of neglect or worse, he takes them to Dr. Dani Novak, not only because Dani’s is partially deaf and fluent in sign language, but because she’s the most compassionate and kind doctor he knows. His heart aches every time he lays eyes on her, because she has made it clear a relationship is off the table. Diesel knows there’s a mutual attraction, though so he’s not sure what’s holding Dani back.

Diesel and Dani’s attraction can’t be ignored when they’re thrown together to look after Michael and Joshua when they have no place to go.  However, they’ll have to deal with their feelings in between dodging a killer bent on eliminating Michael. 

I found that the romance drama was low, because Dani and Diesel didn’t have time to wishy washy back and forth, they had to just get their shit sorted and concentrate on not dying, lol! Dani might have tried my patience otherwise. There are a few reasons she’d held back, reasons she felt were valid, but any outsider could’ve told her they were BS.

There were a lot of heartbreaking moments here since Michael was the victim of abuse. Diesel has his own story to tell, and he helped Michael deal with the feelings of guilt, shame and anger.  

Despite Into the Dark being over six hundred pages long, I felt like I breezed through the story pretty quickly. Lots of action and danger, they kept me turning the pages, and I cared about what happened to Dani, Diesel, Michael and Joshua!

I switched back and forth from e-book to audio and I'm happy I did that because I didn't want to put the book down when I had to get real-life stuff done.  Hillary Huber did an excellent job with both the male and female voices.

4.5 Suns