Review: Dark Deception by Nancy Mehl

Playing dead was harder than she ever could have imagined.

Well, the first line certainly drew me in. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel didn’t live up to that early promise. After that gripping first scene, the story jumps forward several years. The first few chapters of the novel were mostly backstory and setup, explaining what happened between the prologue and the present. This meant the novel didn’t really start until around the 10% mark—which felt slow and not at all suspenseful.


Long story short, Kate survived the attack from a serial murderer which killed her twin sister. She’s now part of the witness protection programme, living in the middle of nowhere. New evidence says the man her testimony put in jail can’t have been the killer, which means a new trial ...which places her in danger as she’s the sole living witness.

Then things get complicated as too many characters are introduced, too many of which seem to have little or nothing to do with the central plot line. This is romantic suspense, so you know they are related, and that got frustrating as well, when I worked out the linkages long before the police, the FBI, and the Marshals did. I didn’t enjoy their lack of joined-up thinking, which came off looking like incompetence.

Overall, the plot was best described by Kate:

This whole thing is so convoluted it almost hurts my brain.

I enjoyed the part of the novel which was straight chase-suspense, as Deputy Marshal Tony DeLuca tries to protect Kate. (Handsome Tony, who blonde with green eyes, despite the Italian name and heritage.) There were some odd scene breaks with no change in formatting, which made it somewhat confusing to read (hopefully that’s just an issue with my ebook version). The romance was okay, but definitely took second place to the suspense.

I read Fatal Frost, the first book in this series, and thought it was excellent. I’m disappointed Dark Deception didn’t measure up, and hope the next is better.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.