Nothing to Fear - Karen Rose

I’ve been a Karen Rose fan since the first book I read by her. And it’s always great to start a new one, not only she writes great stories but we keep revisiting familiar characters.

As director of an inner-city woman’s shelter, Dana Dupinsky safeguards many secrets. Some are new identities; some are new addresses; and some are even hidden truths about herself. Passionately dedicated to Hanover House and the women she protects, Dana has always been reluctant to look for love. But now, just as a case puts her and a child in mortal danger, it seems that love has come looking for her.

Security expert Ethan Buchanan learned to stalk men in the Afghan desert. Now he vows to track down the ruthless woman who kidnapped his godson—and falling for Dana is not in the plan. Yet her very presence seems to chase away the ghosts that haunt him, and her skillful evasion of personal questions raises his hunting instincts. For there’s a deadly new secret at Hanover House. A brutal killer is weaving a web of revenge with a stolen boy at its center. And Dana is the next victim on the list…

The heroine in this book runs a women’s shelter, it’s the second book I read with this kind of setting and it’s always very emotional to read about what those women suffer. And Rose is an expert át writing stories that are very intense and emotional. I read somewhere that she writes “evil” very well and I think that is a very accurate definition.

Ethan Buchanan and Dana Dupinsky meet while dealing with their own problems and although very attracted to they don’t immediately confide in each other. They both have some past problems and it’s only after they start relying on each other that they realise they have to have to join forces against an awful killer. One that Ethan has been looking for and Dana seems to have been helping. The suspense part is really well done, we keep waiting for the next thing to happen (sometimes for the next victim to die) and for the real motives to surface. Because we know who the killer is almost from the beginning, we just don’t know the real reasons behind her killing spree.

I also liked Ethan and Dana as characters, especially Ethan who was such a nice guy always calm and always worried about Dana. She was a bit more stubborn in the way she kept getting herself in dangerous situations. It was explained later why she felt she had to do it but really Ethan seemed the more real of the two. The set of secondary characters is very big, in fact it seems to get bigger in each book since some come from previous books and others are possible future hero material. I wish Evie will be entitled to a romance of her own, she started out a bit childish but what she went through at Sue’s hands and with such courage really makes her deserving of getting her own story.

Grade: B