REVIEW: Beautiful Storm by Barbara Freethy

In Beautiful Storm by Barbara Freethy, Alicia is a storm chaser. She takes fantastic photos and is sure the lightening is speaking to her, showing her what she needs to know. During one storm, a lightening bolt shows her a woman in trouble, and in the ground a missing woman’s military tag. This leads Alicia to Michael, a good friend to missing Liliana, and also a suspect in her disappearance. Alicia feels a connection to Liliana and to Michael. Quickly they are working together on a hunt for answers the police have not found…but someone doesn’t want the truth to come out and there are more hidden secrets than they imagined. Their quest for answers soon becomes dangerous. Will they find them or will it be too late?

I liked the storm descriptions, the mystery, and the attraction between Alicia and Michael. What they were doing, their investigation into Liliana’s disappearance did not feel realistic and I didn’t really enjoy this aspect of Beautiful Storm as much. It just felt too unbelievable that these two were suddenly undertaking a missing person investigation, and could be capable of doing what the police couldn’t do. So while I enjoyed the overall plot of the missing woman, a deepening mystery, the complex family dynamics and an unanticipated romance, what Alicia and Michael were doing was too unbelievable.

Beautiful Storm takes place over only a few days, but the main plot does not feel rushed. Even the attraction between Michael and Alicia didn’t feel instantaneous even though it happened very quickly. They are drawn together by coincidence and circumstance, but find more than either expected. With everything else happening, I was interested to see if a relationship between them would be possible if things ever settled down. Alicia wasn’t my favorite heroine, she has a lot of issues, but she grew on me and did have a lot of positive characteristics. I liked her determination and how she was with Michael. Michael experiences some guilt and ‘what ifs’ in Beautiful Storm, and a possible relationship with Alicia is a complication he doesn’t know if he can deal with. The dynamics of Michael and Alicia’s families add a lot of depth and interest to the story line, and they are written in relevantly to the main plot.

There are great secondary characters in Beautiful Storm, and Barbara Freethy leaves enough of a secondary mystery to make me look forward to reading the next book in this series.

Well paced and easy to read, Beautiful Storm has danger, intrigue, suspense, and relationships that blend well and made Beautiful Storm a good read. I’d recommend Beautiful Storm to romantic suspense readers.

Book Info:

Publication: October 1st 2015 | Hyde Street Press | Lightning Strikes #1

From #1 NY Times Bestselling Author Barbara Freethy comes the first book in a new romantic suspense trilogy: Lightning Strikes. In these connected novels, lightning leads to love, danger, and the unraveling of long-buried secrets that will change not only the past but also the future…

When her father’s plane mysteriously disappeared in the middle of an electrical storm, Alicia Monroe became obsessed with lightning. Now a news photographer in Miami, Alicia covers local stories by day and chases storms at night. In a flash of lightning, she sees what appears to be a murder, but when she gets to the scene, there is no body, only a military tag belonging to Liliana Valdez, a woman who has been missing for two months.

While the police use the tag to jump-start their stalled investigation, Alicia sets off on her own to find the missing woman. Her search takes her into the heart of Miami’s Cuban-American community, where she meets the attractive but brooding Michael Cordero, who has his own demons to vanquish.

Soon Alicia and Michael are not just trying to save Liliana’s life but also their own, as someone will do anything to protect a dark secret…