NetGalley Top Reviewer

NetGalley Top Reviewer
NetGalley Top Reviewer

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Her Dark Heart (DI Gina Harte #5) by Carla Kovach

She took something from him, and he's come to get it back.

DI Gina Harte gets the call one evening -- a report of a missing woman. Mary Hudson tells Harte and PC Kapoor that her daughter, Susan, had failed to pick up her 2-year-old son from the nursery and did not pick up her two daughters from her soon-to-be ex husband as arranged. Mary is adamant that Susan adored her children and would not have left them voluntarily. Mary knows something has happened but her other daughter, Clare, thinks it's just Susan running off to get attention -- after all, she's done it before. DI Harte asks the questions and opens the investigation but she senses that the family is keeping secrets. The Cleevesford Police are taking the disappearance seriously, especially when the body of a male is found and declared a homicide. It seems that Dale Blair had a tenuous connection to Susan and the two were heard arguing on the day Susan vanished. As the police actively begin an in depth examination of Susan's life, new information comes to light that indicates that Susan had been involved in something very dark during her teen years and that her secrets are about to be revealed. Things heat up dramatically as the detectives get closer to figuring out what's going on but who is telling the truth? NO SPOILERS.

This was a complicated case and requires a lot of details to explain all of the pieces and people involved in this suspenseful crime thriller. DI Gina Harte is struggling with her own personal demons and still reeling from the death of her mother as well as trying to get her guilt under control and forgive herself for her own past. So, Gina knows how a person's unresolved past can haunt them and the lengths that someone will go through to keep their secrets hidden. I can only hope that she gets a solid breakthrough and will be on the path to complete healing so she can navigate a relationship and allow herself friendship or even love. I feel for her, I do, but let's agree she's tortured herself long enough and needs to "let it go." Now, as far as the other characters in this series -- I enjoy learning more about the members of Gina's team at the police department but we don't get much information about their lives outside their work. DCI Briggs is a complicated man, and Gina's boss, but I don't know if that relationship will ever work out! As far as the Hudson family -- what a train wreck there! I'd say they all need some serious therapy to deal with all their issues in the aftermath of their ordeals in this book. But, onward, I'm looking forward to book #6 to see what happens with Gina Harte in the next installment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for this e-book ARC to read, review and recommend. I've read all the previous books in the series and suggest that any reader do the same before tackling this one.

This is the fifth book in the series and I urge you to read them in order as I don't think it works well as a standalone given Gina's backstory and history though there are a lot of details in this one.
Genre - crime thriller, police procedural

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