This HaBO is from Diane, who is looking for a romantic suspense. BIG CONTENT WARNINGS for the description below:
It was a romantic suspense about the law enforcement hero/heroine investigating a house fire initially, and then trying to figure out what was going on with the girls living in the house.
I have marathoned on so many audio books that I can’t figure out which book this is – I was thinking Allison Brennan but apparently not.
It was a good read – but the ending escapes me which is very frustrating.
The book starts with a woman trying to escape her cult leaderish husband with a baby and young child. She didn’t know that her oldest daughter did not open the gates to the compound, but instead told her father of her mother’s escape plans. The mom tried to drive the truth through the gates, telling the child in the car to always look after the baby. The mom does not get through the gates and is killed.
Fast forward many years and the child is now a sex worker living in a house in a nice neighbor with 6 or 7 other teen sex workers. The neighbors all think they are college students. The girl stole something from a client that he is now intent on getting back. And she just rescued her baby sister (now a teen), who has just been raped by their father.
Men that are sent to retrieve the stolen item burn down the girls’ house and they barely manage to escape. The girl sends the others off in pairs and separately to hide.
I believe the hero and heroine are in law enforcement and are trying to find the girl and get a hold of what she took. The dad may now be politician or running for office and claiming the youngest daughter was kidnapped.
This one sounds intense.
WTactualF?
Yeesh.
Hoo boy, that is a LOT of plot O.O
Probably not helpful, but that sounds like some crazy that Danielle Steele might do, especially of the ending is depressing.
I had a friend who enjoyed her books so I tried a couple. All I remember was things going badly and then worse, and then even worse until everyone (including me) was miserable.
Closest I can think of is one of the Rizzoli and Isles books (Vanish?), but a number of the plot elements don’t fit.
Not Danielle zdyeele or Rizzoli and Ives as I don’t read those authors.
I believe it is part of Amazon’s Audible Romane package that I belonged to for 15 months. I read alot of new to me authors because it was cheap to experiment. Unfortnayely, they don’t keep track of books read in the Romance Package.
I think this is After the Fire by Will Hill.
Not After the Fire by Will Hill. The book was a romantic suspense and the focus on the cult was mainly only at the very beginning of the book.
But it does sound similar.
Is it K.C. Lynn’s Resisting Temptation? She’s a local (to me) author and I remember reading about her novel in the newspaper a few years ago. The blurb sounds similar to what you described: Cade, a troubled and broody Navy Seal fighting in Iraq, falls passionately in love with a religious Children’s Aide worker called Faith. They spend a night together, just before she gets abducted into a sex trafficking ring. He risks everything to save her. But then they part, only to meet again by chance back home.
Not Resisting Temptation as the hero and heroine worked for same law enforcement tean, the hero was not a Navy Seal and the heroine was not abducted.
There is a trilogy by Jayne Ann Krentz involving survivors of a cult fire (Sons of Anton Salinas) which has some overlap. Or something by Karen Rose?
Brenda Novak has a cult romantic suspense that is pretty dark. Maybe about 5 – 8 years ago. And I think the leads are investigating a murder that ties back to the cult compound. It’s “White Heat” in the Department 6 Hired Gun series.
It sounds like an In Death to me.
Could it be one of Fern Michaels’ Sisterhood books? I have not read them myself, just listened to a podcast discussing a couple of them, but it sounds like the kind of plot they have.
It’s not JAK. They are not that dark.
Not JAK, or an In Death book. Possibly Karen Robards – I will check put the summaries on Audible.
Is it “Sweet Justice” by Christy Reece? Some of the details match up, but others don’t…
Not the HaBo, but several elements in common with “Burn” by Nevada Barr. (Which is, not coincidentally, where I stopped reading the Anna Pigeon mysteries.)
not “the sisterhood” series. Pamela Reece or Nevada Barr. thanks for all the suggestions.