Lost Hours by Paige Shelton #bookreview #bookseries

Thank you Minotaur Books, #partner, for the advanced copy of Lost Hours in exchange for my honest review.

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Published: December 5, 2023

 

Summary:

The fifth installment in the gripping, atmospheric Alaska Wild series.

A year after arriving in Benedict, Beth Rivers is feeling very at home in Alaska, even as outsiders are starting to return to enjoy the brief summer perfection. Beth feels like she’s finally let go of most of her demons. She’s even found her father, Eddy Rivers—or, rather, he found her—and she’s trying to find the middle ground between anger and forgiveness.

One sunny July day, Beth boards a tourist ship to see the glaciers, the main reason visitors venture to the area, and something Beth hasn’t attempted until now. But when the captain has to navigate to an island, a bloodied woman is found standing on the shore, waving for help. When she’s brought aboard, she claims she was kidnapped from her home in Juneau three days earlier, and that a bear on the island killed her captor. She, however, is unharmed.

The woman, Sadie, finds a sympathetic ear in Beth. She tells her that she’s been in Juneau under witness protection, and that the Juneau police don’t like her. When another kidnapping occurs, Beth and police chief Gril can’t help but think the two cases are interwoven, though the clues to solving them will be harder to unravel.

 

My thoughts:

This is the fifth book in Paige Shelton’s Alaska Wild Mysteries series and I really enjoy these books! The series has such a dark, gritty feel to it and is completely atmospheric, too!

Once again, my favorite part of this series continues to be the combination of police procedural and amateur sleuthing. It just works so well here. While each book in this series contains a self-contained mystery, there is the over-arching thread of Beth’s stalker that has been continuing since book 1. The author does provide some backstory to this continued storyline, though of course you will have a richer understanding if you start at the beginning of the series. And there is quite a bit of development in this plotline that has me very excited for the next book!

This time around, we jump right into the action when a bloodied woman is found screaming for help. Having no memory of what happened, Beth is immediately intrigued by her story – a bear attacked the man holding her hostage? Is she part of witness protection of what? Beth is determined to get to the bottom of things, needing to know just what happened, as she herself was a victim of kidnapping – it’s what sent her to Alaska in the first place.

I loved how this all unfolded and how Beth kept at things until they finally figured it all out. The twists and turns this one takes really kept me on my toes and of course, I loved how there are even developments with Beth’s own kidnapping case – something she thought was no longer an issue. That development has me quite eager for the next book and I am quite anxious to see how that all plays out!

I am such a fan of this series and cannot wait to get my hands on that next book!

 

Books in this series:

1. Thin Ice
2. Cold Wind
3. Dark Night
4. Winter’s End
5. Lost Hours
6. ???