First Line: The infant’s mouth sucked as his mother’s breast.

When Kendall Deaton pulls herself and her baby out of a wrecked car, she does what any caring person would do: she saves the man she was riding in the car with. But when she gets to the hospital she realizes that she cannot under any circumstances reveal her true identity and that the accident just might have been a blessing in disguise. Having been the public defender in Prosper, South Carolina the past couple of years she never would have imagined what she would stumble upon while out in the woods trying to locate her husband so that they could make up after a horrendous fight. As a mother who only wants to protect her baby’s life, she is forced to become a reluctant witness against some of Prosper’s most powerful men. The only question is whether Kendall will make it out alive or if someone will track her down and silence her forever.

Okay, this book got my attention pretty quickly. It really picked up pace about halfway through. But I’m going to be honest here, the ending was really strange. And I’m talking about coming out of left field strange. But overall I really enjoyed this book a lot and I really recommend it to others as well!!

First Line: I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can’t make your body move fast enough.

Bella Swan’s live is turned upside down when her one true love, Edward Cullen, and the rest of his family abruptly leaves town after a little incident at Bella’s birthday party. Edward feels horribly guilty and feels like it would be best if his family was not around Bella anymore and would no longer be a danger to her. But his absence absolutely breaks Bella. She mopes around the house, barely eating, barely talking, ignoring her friends, studying her schoolwork to the point of exhaustion. Her father, Charlie, simply doesn’t know what to do for her. But when Bella realizes that he wants to send her to live with her mother in Florida, she appears to break out of her trance. She begins to start interacting more with her school friends. And she becomes incredibly close with Jacob Black. But Jacob is falling in love with Bella. And Bella loves Jacob to a point – she needs him to be able to function, but she is still obsessed with Edward, she’s just learning how to hide it better. But Jacob has his own secrets to keep. Who would have thought that Bella, girlfriend of a vampire, would become best friend to a werewolf?! But in the end, it will be Edward that needs Bella to save him and it will take her all the way to Italy to do so.

Okay, the first part of this book almost made me sick. It was disgusting how whiny and obsessed Bella was with Edward’s leaving. Hey, I was a teenage girl and I had my heart broken once, but I didn’t stop functioning completely like Bella did. It really got on my nerves. So much so that I almost gave up reading. But I stuck with it and I was glad that I did. The ending was great, and I’m looking forward to the third in this series, I’ve already put my name in line at the library for it!!

First Line: Bud Mitchell drove his Ford Explorer along Dune Road.

July 17, 1996 – a date that most Americans will remember for quite some time. That was the night that TWA Flight 800 exploded in mid-air, just a few short minutes after take off, killing the 230 passengers and crew on board. The official conclusion: mechanical failure. But some of the people involved in the investigation simply cannot accept that explanation. The reason?: There is the possibility that a couple on a clandestine tryst on the beach may have videotaped the explosion. But that couple and the videotape has never been found – or have they?! On the fifth anniversary of the crash, John Corey and his wife attend the memorial service. And her past work on the investigation and her unanswered questions and lingering doubts will get him interested in the case and will land them both in hot water when all they’re trying to do is find out the truth behind the explosion of TWA Flight 800.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The only problem in my opinion with it was the fact that it was sooooo slow in the beginning. It really didn’t pick up pace until the second half of the book. However, those last few hundred pages just flew by and it was amazing! The ending was really, really good!!!

First Line: On April 18, 2003, Scott Peterson, a thirty-year-old fertilizer salesman from Modesto, California, was arrested for the murder of his wife, Laci, and their unborn child, whose bodies were identified the same day.

Matt Dalton was involved in the Scott Peterson case as a defense attorney alongside Mark Geragos in the early stages of the investigation. Matt was the attorney that had primary involvement with Scott while he was in jail after being charged. Dalton is convinced that Scott Peterson is stone cold innocent. In this book he goes into a lot of detail as to other explanations for Laci’s murder. He discusses theories such as the satanic cult group and that the burglary of the house across the street was related. He also says that he personally uncovered six witnesses who could place Laci alive on the morning of December 24, 2002. But the question that he really left unanswered is why those witnesses were never called to the stand in the trial. Now, he states somewhere along the way that it is up to the trial attorney to decide who gets called as a witness. And for anyone who watched this trial like I did, they know that Geragos did not exactly prove Scott innocent like he said he would in his opening statement. If I’m not mistaken, I believe Geragos even mentioned those six witnesses in that same opening …. so why were they not called?! If they could swear under oath that Laci Peterson was indeed alive and out and about when Scott Peterson was out fishing, why wouldn’t or couldn’t they testify?! As you can tell from my comments, I didn’t buy into this book whatsoever. If perhaps Geragos had called those witnesses to the stand during the trial, the ending would have been different. But as the jurors stated after the trial was over, there simply was no other alternative as to who could have possibly committed that horrendous crime. Overall, I felt that Dalton made a good case on some of the points that he pointed out, but in the end, he didn’t convince me anymore than Mark Geragos at trial convinced me.

There is one passage that I would like to quote from this book:

I again got the feeling I’d had when I first met him – that he was docile. He certainly didn’t seem to fit the profile of a psychopath, and he didn’t strike me as a killer. I couldn’t imagine this young man doing anything like what he’d been accused of. (p. 30)

The first thing I thought of when I read that ….. people said the same thing about Ted Bundy.