Review: Pretty Good - Gave too Much Away on the Mystery
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 14, 2013
Even though Maggie Solomon hadn’t been born on Windfall Island, she was one of the island’s favorite people.  Beautiful, passionate and loyal, Maggie loved Windfall and it’s inhabitants with all her heart.  As a charter pilot who just happens to bring ‘outsiders’ onto the island she was happiest when she brought them back to the mainland.  However, her latest passenger Dexter Keegan was more than just a passenger arousing the natural curiosity of the island natives, as well as arousing feelings in Maggie that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.  Feelings that were both exciting and scary for a woman who was deathly afraid of being perceived as weak.Dex, cop turned PI is on a covert mission to solve a 100 year old cold-case that could make or break his career: attempting to find information on the identity of the missing Stanhope heir, kidnapped nearly a century ago.  And didn’t Maggie’s bright blue eyes seem to resemble exactly the same eyes as the very wealthy Stanhope clan?  But when sabotage to Maggie’s Piper cub almost led to disaster - Dex will do anything to protect the woman he firmly believes is the only one for him.***  In this contemporary mystery romance, author Sullivan created a delightful locale with a lovely bunch of quirky secondary characters - the kind of characters that you love and  add a full richness to any story.  In spite of the originality of Maggie, a beautiful charter pilot, it took me a bit to warm up to her as Ms. Sullivan created her with both a big chip on her shoulder and attitude galore.  Naturally, it took a little while to discover the reasons why Maggie had such a bad attitude, but then it made sense and easier to relate to Maggie’s childhood pain and begin to understand her.Dex was also a nice addition with an enormous amount of patience when it came to dealing with the abrasiveness of Maggie’s off-handed and sometimes nasty comments.  All he really knew in the beginning was that he was terribly attracted to Maggie and his ‘lust’ hormones were raging.  Obviously, his commitment level was a bit ‘lost in space’ when faced with Maggie’s honesty when she chose to announce her feelings.All in all, the mystery and research of trying to discover what happened 100 years ago from a very close-mouthed and close-knit community was the basis of the plot and the mystery.  Having Maggie and Dex fighting the sensual pull was more or less secondary.  Early on you know who ‘one’ of the bad guys is, then towards the end it seems as though the ending gets rushed leaving the reader with a choice to either go ahead and pre-order the next book in the series or just assume by the prologue of the next book that you know where it’s going and who the actual heir is which is why I am not giving this a higher rating.  The book gives too much away.Bottom line:  Good but it honestly did not engage me as much as other mysteries have.  Personally, I don’t like to know so early in the book who the bad guy is - I like to try to figure it out myself or be surprised.Marilyn Rondeau, for [...]