The Perfect Family

THE PERFECT FAMILY by Carla Cassidy (Signet Eclipse, c2005, ISBN 0-451-21390-4) surprised me.

Set in Cass Creek, Missouri (a suburb of Kansas City) Marissa Jamison is trying to piece her life back together. A little over a year ago her husband, a member of the local fire department, was run down in a grocery store parking lot after stopping to get some milk. Now, raising two kids alone, Marissa thinks things are getting back on track when Alex Kincaid, her highschool sweetheart, comes back inter her life.

And then the "Gift Bow Killer" strikes and the victims all relate to Marissa somehow. Someone wants to be a part of Marissa's life and it looks like they will stop at nothing to make--the perfect family.

This book surprised because I found it in the trunk of my car, which is not uncommon but I think it jumped to the top of a stack or something because I don't recall buying it, putting it there, nothing. I was meeting my husband for lunch and he was on a call and told me it'd be a while so I went looking for something to read while I waited at the station and found this book in the corner of my trunk by an author I'd never heard of before let alone read, but, it had a purple cover and I like purple. So, I picked it up and by the time my husband called to cancel lunch, I had read 150 pages of it and didn't want to put it down. It had really great timing with the suspense and I will definitely search out more books by this author. I will recommend this book to my patrons who enjoy Mariah Stewart and Allison Brennen as I saw several similarities.

The first sentence:

It was a perfect evening.