Saturday, July 12, 2014

Hot Blooded

Over the next few weeks I'm going to give you a LOT of book reviews. I have quite a few in my library I have yet to type out and upload and my review schedule is quite full. Which are both good problems to have. I have this ridiculously ambitious goal of actually reading all of the books I have in my library. Which is laughable because in order to do that, I need to stop buying pretty books for the someday shelf.

Hot Blooded - Lisa Jackson
Hot Blooded
A prostitute lies strangled in a seedy French Quarter hotel room. Miles away, in a rambling plantation house on the sultry shores of Lake Ponchartrain, popular late-night radio host Dr. Samanatha Leeds receives a threatening crank call. Soon, another hooker's corpse turns up. Samantha's ominous caller persists, along with a mysterious female claiming to be a woman from her past -- a woman who's been dead for years. 

With Detective Rick Bentz convinced that the serial killer prowling the shadowy streets of New Orleans is somebody close to Samantha, she doesn't dare trust anyone. Especially Ty Wheeler, her seductive new neighbor who seems to know more about her than a stranger should.

Someone has discovered Samantha's darkest secret. Somebody is convinced that lives must be sacrificed to pay for her sins. So far, the victims have been strangers. Prostitutes. But as a cunning, cold-blooded killer grows bolder, Samantha wonders in dread if she will be the next to die.


I'll tell you upfront that this is the first in a series and admittedly, though I absolutely loved this book, I haven't gotten to the others yet. I will. I will because I'm a fan of Lisa Jackson and I actually stumbled onto her by accident. I won another of her books in a gift basket and I really liked it, so when I saw this on sale for $4 in a clearance bin, I grabbed it up. Which turned out to be a win because it was a good book. 

So we have Sam, who is a talk show psychologist who has clearly angered someone at some point becuase she has a nut job calling her all of the time and confessing to things that are blamed on Sam. Enter hunky Detective Rick who is on the hunt for the serial killer murdering New Orlean's prostitutes. The great thing about this author is that she can weave a good romance while simultaneously maintaining a great suspense. She gives us lots of characters, all of which could be out perpetrator, and she keeps you guessing. And unlike some other novels, I didn't hate Sam. I felt like she was pretty believable for a character and there were a few times where I honestly thought she wasn't going to make it and that would be what carried us over into book two. 

I highly recommend this one if you like your suspense novels to have a little romance. And even if you like your romance to have a little suspense, you're going to like this one too. 

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