MOONLIGHT SINS

A wealthy playboy hires a modest nurse to help out with his ill sister at a remote estate in the Louisiana bayou.

There’s a legend about the women who join the de Vincent family: they either end up insane or dead. In the family’s current iteration, three brothers must deal not only with the sudden and unexpected death of their father, but the homecoming after a decade of their only sister, Madeline, who hasn't spoken since she mysteriously reappeared. They hire Julia Hughes, a nurse from Pennsylvania, to care for her. Lucian, the youngest brother, has already vetted Julia under an assumed name—and their relationship gets off to a rocky start at best, as he had been less than forthcoming about his identity during their scorching first meeting. Now, their close proximity in the de Vincent house—a place considered cursed by the locals, complete with flickering lights, weird noises, and sinister history—leads to a better understanding on both their parts. In this first book of a new series, Armentrout (If There’s No Tomorrow, 2017, etc.) drops readers into the middle of things and makes passing references to background events that you'll have to absorb without yet understanding. While well-written, the author’s initial venture into romantic suspense could have been significantly more fleshed out; smaller subplots that pop up and disappear should have been given more body or been removed altogether. Readers might be surprised by the ending, though they might also find the drawn-out “supernatural-or-not” question to be more frustrating than the mystery that needs solving.

Interesting but forgettable.