Cold Feet, by Brenda Novak

I'd previously read only one book by Brenda Novak,and that one had been a very typical Superromance. Cold Feet (excerpt)is nothing like it.

The Seattle police suspect Madison Lieberman's father was the serial killer they call the "Sandpoint Strangler." Madison refuses to believe it. Her father is now dead, and all she wants is the chance to create a new life for herself and her six-year-old child.

Then she discovers something in the crawl space beneath her parents' house. Something that makes her question her father's innocence. Or the innocence of someone else who's equally close to her...

When another woman turns up dead, crime writer Caleb Trovato wonders whether they're dealing with a copy cat killer. Or is the real Sandpoint Strangler still alive? He's sure Madison knows more than she's telling, and he's determined to find out what. But he doesn't expect to fall in love – or to lead Madison and her child into danger...

Ok, full disclosure: I'm definitely not a big fan of romantic suspense. I'll read one once in a while, if it sounds interesting, but as a rule, I much prefer books in which the emphasis is squarely on the love story. So, you might want to take this into account when you consider that I'm giving this book a C+.

The suspense plot was actually pretty intriguing here, and the author did a good job of developing it, slowly giving us a little more info every time. It wasn't an easy to guess mystery. In fact, I did see the clue pointing out that certain something about the killer that Caleb didn't see (trying very hard not to spoil anything, here!), but this made me focus on the wrong person.

The reason I ended up not really liking the book, in spite of being interested in the mystery, was that I never became really invested in the main characters. The romance felt pretty humdrum, and these people weren't particularly interesting to me.

Also, the book was really, really depressing. Even the romance didn't lighten things up any. The ending didn't give me a positive feeling, it was mostly "Oh, well, poor Ellis. Too bad he killed himself for nothing."