Beguiled - Deeanne Gist and J. Mark Bertrand

Summary: Rylee Monroe, a dogwalker in Charleston’s wealthiest neighborhood, never feared the streets at night. But now a thief is terrorizing the area and worse, someone seems to be targeting her.

Reporter Logan Woods is following the break-ins with the hope of publishing his coverage as a true-crime book. The more he digs, the more he realized this beguiling dogwalker seems to be at the center of everything.

As danger draws ever closed, Logan must choose: Chase the girl, the story, or plunge into the shadows after the villain who threatens everything? (Image from christianretailing.com - Summary from book)

My Review: While browsing through the Christian fiction section of my local book store I found this new book by an author I have read before—Deeanne Gist. She has written 5 other historical fiction/romance books and I loved everyone of them so I was intrigued. Her partner in writing the book, J. Mark Bertrand, is someone whose writing I have not read before but he writes suspense—romance/suspense, a combination I couldn’t pass up.

Just reading the first 2 pages of Beguiled was enough to capture my attention. From then on it was hard to put the book down (which I had to, of course, because real life always moves on whether we want it to or not). The authors did a great job of creating 4 main characters that were very believable. You knew the kind of people they were early on in the book, with one exception—Karl. He was a puzzle to the very end. Each character was vital to the story line of the book and you either loved them or hated them, which is what is supposed to happen in a good book. The story was never boring, only slowing down a couple of times to allow you to breathe. I was not disappointed in this book at all, in fact, I will recommend it to anyone who wants to listen and even those who don’t want to listen. I would love to see these two authors write another book together. It was a great book and will absolutely go in my reread category.

My rating: 5 stars

Sum it up: Things aren’t always the way they appear to be.