Review: Cold Wind by Paige Shelton

  

Title: Cold Wind

Author: Paige Shelton

Series: Alaska Wild Mysteries, #2

Published: December 2020, Minotaur Books

Format: ARC E-copy, 296 pages

Source: Netgalley via Publisher

Summary: 

Second in a new series set in Alaska from beloved cozy author Paige Shelton, Cold Wind will chill your bones.

Beth
Rivers is still in Alaska. The unidentified man who kidnapped her in
her home of St. Louis hasn’t been found yet, so she’s not ready to go
back.

But as October comes to a close, Benedict is feeling more
and more like her new home. Beth has been working on herself: She’s
managed to get back to writing, and she’s enjoying these beautiful
months between summer and winter in Alaska.

Then, everything in
Benedict changes after a mudslide exposes a world that had been hidden
for years. Two mud-covered, silent girls appear, and a secret trapper’s
house is found in the woods. The biggest surprise, though, is a dead and
frozen woman’s body in the trapper’s shed. No one knows who she is, but
the man who runs the mercantile, Randy, seems to be in the middle of
all the mysteries.

Unable to escape her journalistic roots, Beth
is determined to answer the questions that keep arising: Are the
mysterious girls and the frozen body connected? Can Randy possibly be
involved? And―most importantly―can she solve this mystery before the
cold wind sweeping over the town and the townspeople descends for good?

My thoughts: This is the second book in Paige Shelton’s Alaska Wild Mysteries series and I loved it just as much as the first one, if not more! This series has such a dark, gritty feel to it and is completely atmospheric, too!

There are so many things I love about this series, but one that really stands out is how we have a combination of an amateur sleuth and a police procedural. I love this and think it really works well here. I also love that our main character, Beth, is a writer. She is such a fascinating character to begin with, but with all that she has been through, it just adds to the intrigue. Now that some of her memory is coming back, there is a little more tension surrounding her and of course, she can’t help but insert herself into the mystery surrounding the young girls and the frozen woman.

While this can be read as a standalone as the author does give just enough backstory to fill you in on what has happened in the first book, I highly suggest reading it. It will make for a much richer reading experience as there is a plot line that is carried over and will be continued into the next book(s). This is what I love about series – that one continued plot line that builds over the course of multiple books. In this case, it is the basis for Beth moving to Alaska in the first place and that is explained in the first book. We get a little more detail here in this book and are left with a bit of a cliffhanger on that end.

I really enjoy this series and am eager for the next book to be released. This is the perfect read for this time of year…the cold, Alaskan setting makes for a chilly, tense read and I cannot recommend this one enough!

 

Books in this series:

1. Thin Ice
2. Cold Wind