Yes, this is Murder/Mystery Monday – don’t be fooled by the author. While she is most known for writing Fantasy Romance, Nalini Singh has written two Murder/Mystery/Thriller titles: A Madness of Sunshine, and Quiet in Her Bones. Both of these books are packed away in one of the four boxes that I categorised as not anticipating wanting to read/reread within the next 12-24 months, so I’m taking the photos and blurbs from online instead of from my copies.

I think I picked up, and read, A Madness of Sunshine not long after it was released. It was a year that I was focusing more on Murder/Mystery than my preferred Fantasy genre, and as has been apparent in this blog if you have read many posts, I do like to search out and try NZ authors. I had read a couple of the Psy-Changeling novels, which I found enjoyable (but for me definitely library reads rather than owned), so I was curious how she did in a different genre.

Golden Cove is a peaceful town.

That is until one fateful summer, when tragedy shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships and a silent agreement to never look back. But they can’t run from the past forever.

Eight years later, a young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape.

The town’s dark past and haunted present are about to collide – in a murder mystery that’s been years in the making.

I quite enjoyed this novel. From memory, I didn’t figure out the who until shortly before the reveal – you suspect people, but that is half of the fun when reading Mystery novels. It’s definitely worth reading.

Quiet in Her Bones, was unfortunately a bit of a disappointment by comparison. It’s still worth reading, but you need to temper your expectations. The mystery component was interesting, but there were red herrings thrown in for the sake of it, and ended up making no sense or being contradictory.

My mother vanished ten years ago.
So did a quarter of a million dollars in cash.
Thief. Bitch. Criminal.
Now, she’s back.
Her bones clothed in scarlet silk.

When socialite Nina Rai disappeared without a trace, everyone wrote it off as another trophy wife tired of her wealthy husband. But now her bones have turned up in the shadowed green of the forest that surrounds her elite neighbourhood, a haven of privilege and secrets that’s housed the same influential families for decades.

The rich live here, along with those whose job it is to make their lives easier. And somebody knows what happened to Nina one rainy night ten years ago. Her son Aarav heard a chilling scream that night, and he’s determined to uncover the ugly truth that lives beneath the moneyed elegance…but no one is ready for the murderous secrets about to crawl out of the dark.

Even the dead aren’t allowed to break the rules in this cul-de-sac.

If Nalini Singh brings out another, I’ll give it a try. But I’ll probably borrow it from my local library first to see if it will be a keeper like A Madness of Sunshine, or one to read once like Quiet in Her Bones.