Review: To the Grave – Carlene Thompson

In To the Grave, Carlene Thompson’s next thrilling page-turner, no secret can stay buried for long…
As a psychologist, Catherine Gray understands the power of first love. As a woman, she still has feelings for her first crush, James—a handsome lawyer who was trapped in a bad marriage for years. Now that Catherine has returned to Aurora Falls, and James is divorced, they can finally build a life together. But then she stumbles onto his first love—his ex-wife Renée, missing for the past three years—murdered…

Catherine is stunned. How well does she really know James? What secret destroyed his marriage—and who killed his wife? When a mysterious fire destroys the crime scene, Catherine starts looking for answers. In a portrait for a masked woman, she sees Renée’s eyes looking back at her hauntingly. And when the next victim is revealed, it becomes terrifyingly clear that an obsessed killer is on the loose—and Catherine is next in line…

Series:
Release Date:  July 31, 2012
Publisher:  St. Martin’s Press
Source:  Provided by Publisher
Buy the book at:

Reviewer’s Thoughts:

This was one of those books that had me at the blurb but then lost me when I started reading it.

Catherine Gray has always been in love with James.  She was heartbroken when he married another woman and went away for college to sulk.  However, James marriage doesn’t last so she hightails it back to Aurora Falls to practice psychology in a local office and finally be with the man she loves.  But her life isn’t neat and tidy with James and soon it starts unraveling when his ex-wife is found dead in his family’s cottage.  She’s determined to stay by James’ side, no matter what…even if it means her life.

On “paper” Catherine should have been a great heroine.  She’s finally got the man she’s always loved and now, with someone out to hurt him or blame him (she wasn’t sure which) I expected her to her to leap off the page and be James’ champion and dare anyone to say he had anything to do with his wife’s murder.  What we got instead was a completely flat character who was too old fashion and out of date for this story (what late twenties woman drives around singing fifties music when she’s happy?). 

But Catherine wasn’t the only one who seemed to suffer from flatness and come from a different era.  James was even more at odds with present day.  His speech and mannerisms, again, were too out of date for a story and was often times just so blase about what was happening that I truly didn’t care about what happened to him.

While I had problems with the characters, this story did have a nicely written mystery.  The author did a fantastic job of keeping me guessing as to who the real culprit was of the murders.  It truly wasn’t until the last few pages of the book that we finally get the whole story revolving around Renee’s death.  It was for the mystery alone that I kept turning the pages in this one, because in the end I had to know who was behind the whole mess.

For this one, I’m grading on the mystery and deducting for characters I couldn’t deal with.  Total Score: