Cold Heart Creek (Detective Josie Quinn #7) by Lisa Regan

This is the 7th book in a series and I've read all of them, in order, and suggest that you not tackle this as a standalone as there is a lot of backstory in Detective Josie Quinn's personal and professional life.

In this installment, Josie and her live-in boyfriend, Noah Fraley (also a Detective), are called to a camp site where they find two bodies. Husband and wife, Tyler and Valerie Yates, appear to have been poisoned. As they search the campsite, it's obvious that most of their belongings have been taken except for one oddity -- a third sleeping bag. Who was the person who was with them and where are they now? Their investigation takes them to a nearby commune, known as The Sanctuary, and their interviews with the inhabitants lead them nowhere though Josie is suspicious that these people know something that they aren't sharing. Then, on their way back to the station after an exhausting, wet August day, they find a pregnant woman stumbling out of the woods. After Josie delivers the baby (!) and they get the woman and infant to the hospital only to find out that the woman has been missing for 2 years. Is there a connection between their dead campers and this woman? And how is The Sanctuary involved? NO SPOILERS.

This was an easy one-sitting read and I really was all-in for the first 2/3 of the book. Then, something happens that sort of put me off the rest of the story and I never got back the level of interest I had in the case. Josie finally has some sort of closure in her personal life with Lila, however, and I hope that also ends her nightmares (which should require her to be in therapy). I hope that Josie and Noah's relationship can survive. There wasn't much in this installment about the other members of their team: Detectives Gretchen Palmer and Finn Mettner and the main focus was on them running around piecing together this complicated case. To sum up my feelings -- well, this was not one of my favorites in the series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for this e-book ARC to read and review.

This is the 7th book in a series that should be read in order from the beginning.
Genre - police procedural, crime thriller