SILENT EVIDENCE by Clea Koff

3* Felt like a book way, way along in a series, without enough background to the leads. Started excitingly but it fizzled out.

This is well written and the beginning had me turning pages. But then it lost its way with the utter plant that was a certain character who came up visit out of the blue, insinuating himself into Jayne's personal and professional spaces, and yep, it got utterly predictable. 

There's a hint, and I do mean hint, that Jayne and Scott have a could-be thing but nothing happens. Yes, their lives are busy and they've both witnessed trauma, but goodness, there totally was time to take things a little further than a kiss after a casual almost-relationship spanning 5 years, and yet it didn't. It's 2024 and these guys are mid-30s, so yeah, sex is kind of a given, right? 

There was a tiny bit about Steelie and Jayne's past and a little about their super duper receptionist cum counsellor (sadly, have forgotten her name already, but it starts with C) but there needed to be more. They felt like flat characters instead of the intelligent, determined and confident women the blurb alludes to.

The bad guy got offed far too easily and anticlimactically, which disappointed. He was meant to be some kind of psychopath and yet a quick distraction and the bound Jayne had him out flat? Yeah...no. 

We're told that Steelie and Jayne will be back. There's potential for them, as what they do is decent and worthwhile but is...flat, just like they come across. We need to see life in them, as we saw in Jayne's mother. Who kind of appeared as filler then faded away when not needed. I'd like to read more, but their cases need to be exciting and have a hint of danger, which this book never quite revved up to. I suspect that this close to release date it won't get tweaked, but this could have been as good as Kathy Reich's Temperance Brennan series, but felt too flat. And my apologies for using 'flat' so many times, but it's apt.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Avon Books for my reading pleasure. 

P.S. I thought it was book 1 in a series, due to the lack of background, but I think it's actually the 2nd. Hmm. 

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