That first chapter is brilliantly done and hooks you in, the reason this book leap frogged to the top of my tbr. Unfortunately that quality isn't sustained. We're introduced to what feels like the whole town and their pets and their back stories. A non to subtle seeding of the series. Knowing Feehan we'll have these regurgitated in every book in the series and it looks like its going to be a many book series. The mc's are loners, mysterious but they also just happened to have quite a lot of friends. I'm not sure how that works.

The romance low key and 'closed door' with the emphasis on the suspense but it failed at that. You can pretty much identify the murderer well before the mystery is solved. So it super light on the romance but didn't carry the suspense well. I suspect that 3* is a tad generous but I'm in the mood to be.