#TBRChallenge 2023: Appalachian Abduction

The Book: Appalachian Abduction by Debbie Herbert

The Particulars: Romantic suspense, Harlequin Intrigue #1772, Book 2 in Lavender Mountain trilogy, Out of print, Available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Back in that long ago time of 2018, I read the first book in this trilogy and was intrigued (see what I did there?) by enough on the page to be curious about book two. Yes, I'm well aware it's now five years later. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Spoilers Ahoy!

The Review: I'm currently in the middle of a slump which (I'm fairly certain) is being caused by my all-of-the-place-I-don't-know-what-I-want-to-read mood. I'd read two chapters of a historical western I thought I was in the mood for only to DNF it in a fit of "it's me, not you" pique. With my own Challenge deadline barreling down on me I knew I had to find something to read and fast and figured a Harlequin Intrigue was my best bet. When this line is good I inhale the books. They can be fast-paced, exciting, and I rarely come up for air once I start them.  When the line isn't so good?  Well, you get the opposite. Plus I was feeling a little nostalgic for a backwoods shenanigans fix and this book was nearly front and center in my Harlequin storage cupboard.  So, how was it?  

Charlotte Helms is squatting in a backwoods cabin on Lavender Mountain and casing a swanky house in an exclusive gated community.  Why?  Currently an undercover cop on leave from the Atlanta PD, she's convinced the house is at the center of a child-trafficking ring, and the case is personal. She's convinced her BFF's missing teenage daughter, Jenny, is in that house.

The fly in the ointment? She didn't realize she was squatting in a cabin owned by a local cop. Officer James Tedder is former military and been on the job for six months. His sister is now happily married to his boss (now the local sheriff) and while she's pestering James about finding someone and settling down, he's fine. I mean, he doesn't sleep much and has a touch of the PTSD, but really he's fine.  So what if he keeps inexplicably driving by the family cabin with all it's good and bad memories when he's doing his local patrol.  Naturally that's when he finds Charlotte squatting in the old cabin, injured from a run-in with the local baddies, and feeding him a line of BS he doesn't buy for a minute.

We all know what happens next - Charlotte eventually spills the truth of why she was squatting on his land, and after a debrief with his brother-in-law, these two are now partners working to find evidence to bust the child-trafficking ring.

Intrigue books are short (around 250 pages) which can make them very fast-paced, but brain-bending whodunits are harder to pull off.  That's why so many of them lean more on the thriller end of the mystery genre.  There's not a lot of mystery here - the reader knows there's a child-trafficking ring and we know that Charlotte knows that the couple who owns the house are likely the masterminds. It's the finding and rescuing of the victims that keeps the story humming along.

The problem here is that it's not terribly exciting when the bad guys are so amazingly inept.  I mean, bare minimum all they had to do was lay low and not cause a fuss.  Instead the hired goons are doing things like openly firing on police officers in patrol cars, running them off the road, and sending threatening messages.  And here's the thing - Charlotte has nothing. I mean, less than nothing. All she's got is witness testimony from a girl who escaped but has since vanished into the wind. Like, she's gone.  Then of course you have our masterminds who decide to hold a fundraiser for the Lavender Mountain Sheriff's department very close to their home (the gated community clubhouse!) when they know Charlotte and James are poking around and will be at said fundraiser. And conveniently these geniuses decide to not move the girls. It's all pretty thin.

The romance here is fine. Charlotte did get on my nerves a fair amount - one of those I'm Tough and Strong and Can Take Care of Myself types.  A little of her went a long way for me, but she never crossed a line for me where I would have happily throttled her, so that's something I guess.  James was OK.  A decent guy just trying to do right by his community yada yada yada.

I continued to enjoy the northern Georgia Appalachian setting, although I felt like this was better drawn and utilized in the first book.  Also, the Tedder family is viewed through a white-trash hillbilly lens by most everyone in town - and it makes sense that now sister Lilah is married to the respected town sheriff that this would be toned down somewhat, but I gotta be honest and say I missed that aspect in this story.  But then I'm a sucker for "wrong side of the tracks" type characters.

Was this a complete failure for me? Absolutely not.  Was it a resounding success?  Meh.  But hey, I read it in two sittings and given that prior to this book I read 2 chapters in about two weeks? That's nothing to sneeze at. 

Final Grade = C