Review: Intriguing family dynamics, love, and mystery
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 30, 2014
Where There’s Smoke picks up a few months after the 4th of the Kelly Family novella’s and you get to see all 4 of the siblings, their significant others, family members, and coworkers.  Detective Levi Hawks, who is seeing Marina, the youngest of the Kelly siblings, has several cases he is working.After several break-ins, burglaries, and vandalism, Levi starts to link the incidents and wonders if someone wants to cause harm to the Kelly’s.  As he works on the details, he also has a burglary-suicide that may be murder.  With 3 of the 4 Kelly siblings, their cousins, significant others, all active police members, along with the Kelly fathers who have retired, there is a lot of interaction due to cases and family dinners.  As usual, Mike Kelly, the father of Storm, Ethan, Frankie, and Marina, doesn’t think any of his children are doing the right things and his comments cause dissension with everyone.We also see Levi’s previous girlfriend and wonder why she wants a friendship with him, after cheating on him while they were together for several years.I was happy to read more about the Kelly family members, individually, as couples, as a family, and their professions.  The pacing of the police cases and results kept me interested and were believable.I previously read the novella’s Ethan, Storm, Frankie, and Marina, and believe that I enjoyed this story more due to knowing more about the characters.  The descriptions of the various characters makes you feel like you know them and feel a part of their story.  I’m not sure I could pick a favorite of the four siblings and their significant others, due to the various intriguing differences in their stories, but all were enjoyable.I look forward to reading more of Ms. Collins’ work and highly recommend any of the Kelly Family stories.