Amy

A tragedy from the past resurfaces in this tale of family secrets and reignited love.

After her mother’s death twelve years ago, Lynette Carlisle watched her close-knit family unravel. One by one, her four older siblings left their Nantucket home and never returned. All seem to harbor animosity toward their father, silently blaming him for their mother’s death. Nobody will talk about that dreadful day, and Lynette can’t remember a bit of it.

But when next-door neighbor Nicholas Cooper returns to Nantucket, he brings the past with him. Once her brother’s best friend and Lynette’s first crush, Nick seems to hiding things from her. Lynette wonders what he knows about the day her mother died and hopes he might help her remember the things she can’t.

But Nick has no intention of telling Lynette the truth. Besides the damage it might cause his own family, he doesn’t want to risk harming the fragile friendship between him and the woman he once thought of as a kid sister.

As their father’s failing health and financial concerns bring the Carlisle siblings home, secrets begin to surface—secrets that will either restore their shattered relationships or separate the siblings forever. But pulling up anchor on the past propels them into the perfect storm, powerful enough to make them question all they ever believed in.

Catherine West’s story The Things We Knew is more than a roll through family history – it’s the slow, suspenseful investigation of suppressed memories about a suspicious death that devastated a family.  Each family member has moved on but one, and that one is left holding the luggage of responsibility for the present and confusion over the past.  That one wants to find peace with the past and find hope for the future but memory gaps leave her bending under the weight of her burdens.

Her siblings are no different.  While Lynnette is trying to deal with the past, her siblings are all fleeing from it – but they’re just as captive as she is.  Their stories are widely varied and uniqe, and I like the way that West incorporates a broad range of the human condition in the members of this one family.

Lynnette has kept her faith through her struggles, and her journey is inspiring.  Her siblings’ journeys, although all very different, each provide lessons of their own throughout the story, and therein lies the genius of the book.

While Lynnette is a main character, her siblings have strong supporting roles, but no two characters are alike.  This variance keeps the reader turning pages and makes it possible for many different readers to connect emotionally with someone in the story.  I personally liked Lynnette’s determination to find the truth, but I can see my daughter in Ryan and my husband in Nick.  I think the Carlisle siblings will appeal to a widely varied audience.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way that West dispenses the family information.  The Carlisles are full of secrets, and by dribbling them out slowly, often as Lynnette discovers them, the reader is kept thirsting for more.

I don’t think the cover does the book justice.  It’s very simple, and for some reason the title font made me think it was going to be an emotionally-dramatic family story; and maybe that’s not too far off, but with the suspicion of murder, international music stars, alcohol and drug addictions, secret trysts, and controlling parents, it’s so much more than that.  The Things We Knew may not quality for romantic suspense, exactly, but it’s close; it’s definitely a summer must-read.

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Catherine West writes stories of hope and healing from her island home in Bermuda. When she’s not at the computer working on her next story, you can find her taking her Border collie for long walks on the beach or tending to her roses and orchids. She and her husband have two grown children.

Death has always been part of Gwen Marcey’s job. But when faced with her own mortality, everything takes on a different hue.

Forensic artist Gwen Marcey is between jobs and homes when she accepts temporary work in Pikeville, Kentucky. The Eastern Kentucky town, located deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, has been plagued by a serial rapist and a series of unexplained deaths. Before Gwen can develop a composite drawing, the latest witness vanishes, just like all the previous victims.

Turning her attention to sketching the face of an unidentified body, she discovers a link between his death and a Pentecostal serpent-handling church. Serpent-handling is illegal in Kentucky, and the churches have gone underground to avoid the authorities and continue to worship as they believe. Gwen is offered a handsome reward to infiltrate the renegade members, a reward she desperately needs as it seems her breast cancer has returned.

Joined by her digitally-obsessed, Generation Z daughter, Gwen goes undercover to a nineteenth century revival, planning to draw the faces of the snake handlers so they can be identified and arrested. Instead she uncovers a murderous plot and a festering evil.

If you’re a fan of criminal suspense books, like those of Terri Blackstock, you’ll want to read Parks’ latest “When Death Draws Near.”  It has all the action and suspense of a murder mystery but the drama like you’d find on the big screen.  The combination can’t be easy to pull off, and yet Parks wrote so many twists and turns into her story that she kept me guessing until the very last page.

Gwen isn’t your typical leading lady.  She’s not super young, super rich, or super pretty.  In fact, she’s divorced, broke, and a cancer survivor  – with the scars to show it.  Her rough predicament pulled at my heartstrings more than once, but I liked her all the more for it.  She was real – and she was really smart, too.  I love stories in which the characters really use their brains to solve the case.

In Gwen’s case, it went a bit beyond that, because while it was her brains that figured out whodunit, it was also her endurance that saved her skin – literally.  Parks wrote a climactic ending that went on and on, spurring me on to find resolution.

Mystery stories have been my favorite since I read my first Hardy Boys’ when I was seven, and I’ve collected a long list of great mystery authors since that time.  I’m happy to report that I’ve just added another.

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Carrie Stuart Parks is a Christy finalist as well as a Carol award-winning author. She has won numerous awards for her fine art as well. An internationally known forensic artist, she travels with her husband, Rick, across the US and Canada teaching courses in forensic art to law enforcement professionals. The author/illustrator of numerous books on drawing and painting, Carrie continues to create dramatic watercolors from her studio in the mountains of Idaho.

Find out more about Carrie Stuart at http://www.carriestuartparks.com.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.