Review: Deadly Recall by T.R. Ragan (audio)

Title: Deadly Recall

Author: T.R. Ragan

Series: Jessie Cole, #2

Narrator: Kate Rudd

Published: March 2018, Brilliance Audio / Thomas Mercer

Length: 7 hours 47 minutes / 281 pages

Source: Audio via Publisher / Print – ARC E-copy via Publisher via Netgalley

Summary: 

PI Jessie Cole is about to discover that there’s no revenge too wicked as New York Times bestselling author T.R. Ragan’s gripping series continues. 

When
you search for the missing, there’s no telling what you’ll find. PI
Jessie Cole learned that painful truth firsthand when her sister
disappeared. Now a new case will test Jessie and Ben once again.

Owen
Shepard, the public face of one of the country’s biggest health
insurance companies, has become the target of a vengeful father. The man
blames Shepard for his child’s death and plans to make the CEO know
what it’s like to live with a broken heart—and watch others die. After
killing two employees, the desperate father kidnaps Shepard’s daughter.
Tasked with finding her, Jessie and crime reporter Ben Morrison are
running out of time to save her.

Meanwhile, Ben is still seeking
insight into the man he used to be before a car crash erased his
memories. And each discovery is leading Jessie and him down a
frightening road. What they find could scar both of them forever.

My thoughts: This is the second installment in T.R. Ragan’s Jessie Cole series and I have to say I am really enjoying this series so far. As I noted in my review of the first book of this series, Her Last Day, I haven’t read anything by T.R. Ragan before starting this series, but I do have to say, I am slowly becoming a fan! 

I will start off by saying that while this book would probably do well as a stand-alone as T.R. Ragan does give enough of a summary to catch you up on the characters and what has happened to lead them to where they are, it does give spoilers for that first book. So if you have any plans on reading Her Last Day – read that first! Plus, you just get a better sense of the character development by reading the books in order…I’m a big fan of doing that whenever possible, and I realize that it’s not always feasible, but since this is only the second book in the series, it should be easy to do.

I love that once again we see Jessie and Ben working together. I liked the dynamics of their teamwork in the first book – a private investigator and a crime reporter who have a little bit of a past that is uncovered in that first book. As they start to come to terms with all that they have uncovered just recently, Jessie is eager to move forward while Ben wants to learn all he can about who he was before his accident. 

Once again there are multiple plot lines going on, much like the first book, so the story moves at quite a quick pace. There’s the father vowing to avenge his daughter’s death, a kidnapped baby, Ben looking into his past, and the job Jessie has assigned to Zee, the girl Jessie rescued from in the previous book. Each of these is fascinating and intriguing in their own right and really keeps you engaged, especially as you watch Jessie trying to juggle how she decides which of the four she is going to focus her energies on at any given moment. And on top of that, she has her niece she is still responsible for that is giving her a run for her money at times.

I like the way this series is set up. We get the cold cases – the kidnapping case Jessie worked on – but we also get so much more. There’s such great character development happening, which as a reader of a lot of series, I find I enjoy the most. And with this series in particular, there is a lot of baggage for our characters. And not everything is let out of the bag all at once. We get a little each time we meet up with them so that we can’t wait until the next book. This is especially true in Ben’s case this time. 

I can’t wait to see where this book goes in the next installment. We got some answers about Ben and I’m curious to see where that leads us. But I’m also interested to see what’s next for Jessie and her team. Does she keep Zee on or was this just a temporary thing? I guess only time will tell!


 

Audio thoughts: I was so happy to see that Kate Rudd had continued narrating this series. I am a big stickler for having consistency, whenever possible, with narrators in series. And I thought Kate did a great job with the voices, using the same voices and personalities as she did in the previous book. Her tone and pacing were great and she infused just the right amount of tension and emotion in her voice as needed. I hope she continues to narrate this series for as long as it goes on!

Books in this series: 

1. Her Last Day
2. Deadly Recall 
3. Deranged – due out October 2018