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Kiss Me, Kill Me (Secrets of Shadow Falls)

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Sixteen years ago a child was born. Sixteen years ago a young woman who had just given birth to a baby was found murdered. The child was never found and the murder was still in the books. In Shadow Falls, sixteen-year-old children are disappearing, one by one. When the first one, Kyle, is found dead, Carrie Overton, the local doctor, begins to panic. She has a secret that she has been keeping for sixteen years. As she races against time to help the police find the kidnapper and murderer, she fears for her own son's safety.

Carrie Overton is a loving and well-liked doctor in the small town of Shadow Falls. She is also a mom and a wonderful parent to her son Sam. Carrie also acts as mother to Sam's girlfriend, Sadie. Sadie comes from a broken home and has had to care for her mother all her life. She is tough and resilient, a strong young woman to the core. But she has become a part of Carrie's extended family.

Carrie has a secret that has been with her for sixteen years. Sam is not her real child. She could not have children. She ran into Sam's real mother on the first night she came into Shadow Falls to begin her career as a doctor. The young woman's car was pulled over to the side of the road. When Carrie pulled over to offer assistance, she found the woman in labor, just ready to deliver. This would be Carrie's first delivery in her new job. Once the baby was born, a boy, she checked to make sure that the mother was alright, tucked her coat around mother and baby and went to the nearest home to contact an ambulance. When she found no one there, she returned to where she had left the young woman and her new baby in the car, only to find the car gone. As she got out, she saw her coat on the ground. Wrapped in her coat, with a note asking her to care for him was the baby, Sam.

Carrie made a decision at that time to keep Sam and to be the best mother ever. It was one of the most unethical things she had ever done, forging a birth certificate as well as claiming him as her own, but she never looked back, and he was her son in every other way possible.
Sam is smart and fun, he has put himself in harm's way in the past to help save someone he did not know, but was well rewarded. He is well-respected for a young sixteen year old and has many friends. He is sports-oriented, loves to camp, and absolutely loves his mom. The other person in his life is his girlfriend Sadie, a girl much like his mother, to be honest--tough, with a core of steel, but also wonderful and compassionate.

Gabriel (Gabe) Cain is a drifter, a musician, with the standard look. He has long hair but is quite handsome. He, like everyone else has just heard the news that a woman who was murdered sixteen years ago had been misidentified at the time. He has come to Shadow Falls with a secret of his own. He is free-spirited and a wonderful, kind man. He first meets Carrie at a sports event where she is watching her son play. One of her son's friends has an asthma attack and he volunteers his help.

The area is rife with tourists, and the police have their work cut out for them. Lining up volunteers for searching for the lost boy proves to be providential. Everyone, including many of the tourists turn out for the search. It is one of these tourists, Ambrose Arthur Peck, who finally finds the body of young Kyle. He is so traumatized by it that he is almost inconsolable. Being a tourist in Shadow Falls has just become a terrible disadvantage. Everyone is being looked at with suspicion, but no one more so than any stranger in town.

As the action heats up, Carrie and Gabe are drawn together. Neither of them are the other's type, and yet they begin the slow dance of attraction. Respect turns into a smoldering and cautious tension between them, but they are both holding a secret. Carrie wants to entrust her secret to Gabe, but she is afraid to entrust this secret to just anyone. When Sam's girlfriend Sadie disappears, Sam becomes inconsolable. Gabe steps in to help. His logic and free thinking style seems to be the only thing keeping Sam from the brink, who is petrified that Sadie will be found dead just like his friend Kyle. As the tension and longing continue to scorch the pages, the action and suspense continues. Who is taking the children? Not even Gabe is free from suspicion.

In Kiss Me, Kill Me, Maggie Shayne has delivered an extremely fast-paced, action-filled suspense, filled with romance and longing. The characters are so well developed you get a great visual as they come into their part of the play. The tension and longing between Carrie and Gabe is heartfelt and intense. As each new action plays into the story, they have to continue to rethink their values. Carrie is ready to offer it all to Gabe including her secret, but is afraid. There is more going on in the little town of Shadow Falls, and they have to strengthen their bond of trust because without that, they may miss the signs. And as everything she holds dear comes into danger, she must find the strength with Gabe at her side to protect what is theirs at all costs.

Maggie Shayne has created red herrings at every turn, sending the reader in different directions. Just when you think you know what is happening, another twist to the story turns your direction. But through it all you feel the strong, yet also fragile love, testing its wings, looking for that one sure word or action that will set it in stone. To the very end, there are surprises, a powerful love story and a marvellous mystery, set with an ending that will leave you fulfilled.

Dr. Carrie Overton has a wonderful life and a beautiful son named Sam. No one would know that Carrie is hiding a secret and has been for sixteen years. This secret that she is scared someone will find out has to do with her son.

Kiss Me, Kill Me starts off with the reader finding out Dr. Overton's past secret and then we are taken to today where Sam's friends start going missing. First there is Kyle and then another friend disappears. Why are the kids missing? Does this have something to do with Carrie's secret?

This is the second book I have read by Maggie Shayne and was once again not disappointed. This is the third book in the Secrets of Shadow Falls' series. You can read these books on their own but the author does makes references to the previous books in this one.

I love the way Shayne lures the reader into any situation and makes her characters so real. You just want to shout go, stay, stop, etc. like they are your friends. This is the sign of a great writer. I look forward to reading more of Maggie Shayne's books but I definitely recommend this one.

Maggie Shayne delivers an uncompromising, impossible-to-put down and addicting story of suspense in her latest release, Kiss Me, Kill Me.

Yearning for motherhood but told, medically, that this would be an impossibility, Dr. Carrie Overton meets fate one late night, as she helps a young mother deliver a baby along the roadside. When she returns from searching for help, Carrie discovers the mother gone and the baby wrapped tightly, along with a note saying that the young mother believes that it was fate that brought her and Carrie together and that she wants Carrie to raise the baby as her own.

Knowing that, legally, what she was doing was wrong, Carrie knows in her heart, that she would be a wonderful mom and that this was her chance to make her dreams come true. With every intention of finding the biological mother, Carrie soon discovers that very shortly after giving birth, the mother is found dead. So begins the search for the disappearing baby.

Sixteen years later, Sam has grown into a magnificent young man, Carrie an adoring and protective mother, hoping for her secret to never emerge. Then teenagers begin disappearing and dead bodies piling up. Carrie fears that her son will be next and will do anything to protect him and keep him safe.

When a stranger, Gabriel Cain, appears in town and Sam is quickly taken with him, question begin to form. A strange resemblance between Sam and Gabe becomes apparent and a shocking revelation takes form. A sizzle of ignition forms between Carrie and Gabe, Sam's sudden disappearance brings heated feelings to a peak and the race to find Sam is ticking quickly away. Will death reach Carrie's son before she and Gabe can or will the killer win?

Kiss Me, Kill Me is the third in the "Secrets of Shadow Falls" series and honestly, my favorite. The characterization of Carrie was excellent and her feelings were truly felt - her compassion and intense love for her son and desire to keep him safe at all costs, shone through without a doubt and is easily relatable by any parent. Gabe is amazing, sexy and delightful. With a few secrets of his own, the reader will quickly become engrossed in what will happen once these secrets surface and his ability to bring a positive vibe to any occurrence is refreshing.

*This is a scene taken after Sam's girlfriend has been discovered missing and shortly following the murder of his best friend:

Carrie moved closer to her son and slid a hand to his shoulder. "We can go into town, join the next shift of volunteers, if you want. Or we can get a supply of posters and drive around putting them up."

He finally met her eyes - his so woefully tormented that she nearly gasped aloud. "I don't know what to do." Then he looked at Gabe. "What do you think we should do?"

Gabe drew a breath, pulled a chair in front of Sam's and sat down, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "You shouldn't take action until you get your head straight about a matter. I know it sounds like New Age fluff, but everything that exists was a thought before it was a thing. And the thing usually follows the thought. So we need to get our thoughts about Sadie into line with the outcome we want here, and I think we'd better do it soon."

As a suspenseful and tense-filled story, Kiss Me, Kill Me is perfect. Each page leaves the reader racing to flip to the next, dying to see what happens and holding their breath as one thrilling moment leads to the next. As well as suspense, Kiss Me, Kill Me is sprinkled with a healthy dose of romance, sizzle and sparks as the relationship between Carrie and Gabe takes off. Their desire and attraction is highly palpable and adds a delightful dimension to the story.

Maggie Shayne is a mesmerizing talent and her stories delight and exalt. Kiss Me, Kill Me is no exception and will bring thrilling pleasure to a vast audience of readers.

For sixteen years, Dr. Carrie Overton has hidden a secret about her son from everyone even as she stays fearfully vigil that someone will expose her. Still she knows she has little reason for her trepidation as no one else except the stranger "Ever" who gave her the newborn is privy to her secret, not even her child Sam.

When the identity of a murder victim from sixteen years ago is determined after being misidentified as Sarah Quinlan but now Olivia Dupree, Carrie panics. She knows she can be exposed especially with authorities searching for the deceased woman's missing offspring; someone also has offered a half million award. Gabriel Cain arrives in Shadow Falls hoping to find the offspring he never met because he never knew he had sired a child. His penetrating quests frighten Carrie as he seems to be closing in on her and her child. As she distrusts Gabe who she knows could destroy her life but most important her heart on two fronts, Carrie finds herself attracted to her natural enemy.

This is an exhilarating romantic suspense that grips the audience with the opening scene from sixteen years ago and never lets up on the tension while also providing a fascinating star-crossed romance between two people who should be beloved enemies. The story line is fast-paced as not only has Gabe arrived, but so has a psychopath tied to the original murder incident. Readers will relish Maggie Shayne's latest tense thriller (see Kill Me Again).

Harriet Klausner

Maggie Shayne knows how to keep suspense simmering. Kiss Me, Kill Me, the third book in her Shadow Falls trilogy, is a fast paced, can't put it down read. Her continuity of characters throughout the series is so compelling, you wonder in the first book which character will be the central figure in the next. She draws you in, and doesn't let you go until the last page. The really neat part is each book in itself is a wonderful story, with a definite ending. Then, you start the next book, and meet old friends from the first one. It's like going to a family reunion, wondering which of the relatives "did it".

This another book on the series of this little town, I found it good like the other books before. I really like Maggie Shayne and always look for her books.