A grisly romance about stepcousins who become lovers, and a serial killer who murders eight-year-old girls and then stuffs them like moose heads. Olivia Archer Morrison and her daughter, Sara, return to LaAngelle Plantation in northern Louisiana, where Livvy was raised. Just the sight of her causes Big John, the Archer family patriarch, to keel over with a stroke. Livvy, a divorced single mom who had been a teenage hell-raiser, was brought up by the Archers, but she’s not one of them by blood. Her mother, Selena, married into the family and shortly afterward was found dead in a lake on the property. In her old bedroom at LaAngelle, Livvy has nightmares about Selena’s death and wakes smelling her mother’s perfume, White Shoulders. This must be her imagination, right? Any romance reader these days knows that spirits and ghosts of all kinds watch over protagonists in danger from human monsters with their own agendas. As Livvy tries to remember the events of her mother’s death, Robards (The Midnight Hour, p. 1691, etc.) fills us in on the multiple murders committed more than 20 years ago by a serial killer who preys on little girls the same age as Sara. She leads us through the last night on earth of each of several children, right up to the time a chloroformed rag blacks out their futures. Also keeping Livvy safe is family scion Seth Archer, a stern big-brother figure to her when they were growing up who has begun to look at her cutoff jeans in a whole new way. Livvy and Seth, divorced with a daughter as well, cement a relationship and a home as the danger the reader knows will never hurt them comes closer and closer. Robards does a decent job mixing elements of family, love, and mayhem. Not one of her most exciting efforts, but fans won—t be disappointed.
