I haven't read and Mary Burton books before and I cannot work out for the life of me why. She has fast become one of my favourite authors with this book - Her last word. Her writing style is similar to early Erica Spindler and Sandra Brown both favourites of mine. In this book we see Kaitlin return to the town where her cousin Gina went missing and she was the last person to see her before she was taken. Her reason for returning is simple- to make a podcast talking to those who had a connection with Gina before and after she went missing. Then people associated start dying. Detective Adler is assigned to one of the murders, he himself with a past that affects his present and we see the build of of tension between he and Kaitlin build throughout. The book draws the reader in and I finished this book over two days with sleep deprivation to prove how much I enjoyed this. I didn't guess the twist and the ending was a refreshing surprise for me. Overall I loved this book and do plan on reading more of Burton's work in the future.

4-1/2*
Talk about amazing suspense stories by author and you simply must come up with Mary Burton! I have read numerous books by Ms. Burton and she plays all her cards close to her chest in trying to figure out who the villain truly is! Once again, the twist of “who” the murderer was and the “why” of it was a closely guarded secret right up to the very end.

Fourteen years earlier, Kaitlin Roe was the lone witness to her cousin Gina’s abduction. She couldn’t get the memories out of her head and the guilt she felt over leaving her screaming so Kaitlin did what she’d always done - run away. Kaitlin was a troubled teen and used drugs and alcohol to drown out the memories which really never left her. Now she is ready to do something - anything - to solve the mystery of who killed her cousin.

However the ‘bad reputation” she had as a teen doesn’t make people very agreeable to talk to her. When the people she has started to talk to somehow end up murdered, it becomes even harder to to get people to open up and it seems her questions seem to have drawn the murderer out of retirement and put a target on Kaitlin’s back.

Even as Detective John Adler is drawn into the cold case, he realizes that finding the murderer is a priority, but keeping Kaitlin save seems even more of a priority.

Fast action - lots of red herrings and a great twist ending. Just the way I like them!


Marilyn Rondeau

I enjoyed this one very much. Light on the romance but since I love a good mystery that keeps me guessing, I am A. O. K with that!

Mary Burton is one of those authors that readers wait with bated breath for her newest psychological thriller, and in her latest novel “Her Last Word” Ms. Burton will satisfy old fans and new fans alike. Kaitlan Roe is creating a podcast that explores what happened to her cousin on a summer night years ago when Kaitlan herself is unclear what happened. Detective John Adler is called out to investigate a murder of a young woman who he later learns is involved in the mystery of Kaitlan’s cousin. The deeper he delves into the murder, another person that was there that long ago night meets a similar fate. Together John and Kaitlan race against time to find the murderer and to save Kaitlan. I was given an advanced copy of this book, and all of the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I am a massive fan of Mary Burton so I was delighted to get a copy of Her Last Word and I was not disappointed. Gripping from the first chapter. There aren't any big twists and turns or unexpected reveals. Its just a down right good thriller.

This is a fun romantic suspense novel that brings us into a world surrounding a cold case of Gina, cousin to our main character, Kaitlin Roe. Burton tells Kaitlin (and Gina's) stories through alternating timelines, which I usually have a hard time with, and this was no exception. Alternating timelines aside, this story is much more suspense with a tinge of romance.

Very well done! The murder scenes were particularly chilling and had me on the edge of my seat.
I didn't guess who the murderer was and I was hooked on finding out what happened to Gina and who the modern day killer was. The story jumped quite a lot between the present day and fourteen years ago when Gina was abducted. I'm not a big fan of jumping in time like this but I thought it worked well here and gave me a good understanding of the events and the characters involved.
I liked the little bit of romance although it was rushed towards the end. Kaitlin and Adler made a good team. The supporting characters were very likeable as well and contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the story.

I discovered Mary Burton last year and in that time I have been tracking down all of her books. She is a solid suspense writer and adds just a touch of romance to her books. Her Last Word is another good addition to her body of work. The story revolves around a 14 year old case involving a missing teenager. Two cousins were walking along a road late during a summer night. One went missing and one doesn't remember what happened beyond a man in a mask grabbing her cousin and then running. Now Kaitlin is no longer a wild teenager but an adult woman on a mission. That mission is to shine light on her cousin Gina's disappearance and hopefully bring her home. She begins by interviewing for a Podcast with two of her cousins friends that were with them that night and that's where our story begins. One of the friends is murdered and the police are drawn in to investigate. Is this a random crime or is this connected to Gina's disappearance? Detective John Adler has many thoughts about this case and plans to keep his relationship with Kaitlin Roe purely professional no matter how much she intrigues him. Kaitlin has no interest in policemen because of their treatment of her in the past. Can these two both solve their mysteries and find a little bit of happiness? I highly recommend Her Last Word to all suspense fans. It's intriguing, suspenseful and full of interesting characters. It's written from dual POV and there's also some interview scenes from Kaitlin's Podcast included as well. I received a reader copy from Netgalley and this is my freely given, honest review. I can't wait to read what Mary Burton has coming next!

Her Last Word is a book that has a face paced, intense storyline. The police procedural part tells the story of a cold case that has the potential to tie into a current case. It was interesting to me to see how Detective John Adler was able to take a case that had been all but forgotten for so many years and use the clues from that story to bring back to life, working to solve it, and working to use the clues to solve past and present murders.

This is a romantic suspense book with twists and turns that I never saw coming. I loved the different timelines between the present story and Kaitlin's interviews. Sometimes the storylines didn't come together when going between the two of them as smoothly as I thought they should but that was part of what happen. The fact that the notes that Kaitlin got did not always match what the police were finding out. The romance part of the story was minimal and I liked that it was not at the front of the storyline. That allowed me to focus on the murders and try to figure out who dun-it. I will say I never guessed correctly.

Her Last Word is a standalone romantic suspense and psychological thriller. Different from Burton’s other Romantic Suspense Her Last Word follows a slightly different formula. You have the main present day storyline interceded with short “Interview Files” that fills in the blanks further on what happened fourteen years ago. I loved how she did this, the interview files at times has a foreshadowing quality sometimes not as ominous just a clue as to who they will be talking to next and what their part was in the original case. This is more suspense/thriller than romance, it’s not until close to the end that the main characters get together, which I also liked because they spend most of the time focusing on the case and not their feelings for one another. The sexual chemistry does exist it’s quite amusing how many times someone else mentions the obvious attraction between them and when they finally do give in it’s pretty hot.

Gina Mason was a girl everyone liked until one night she disappeared. The only witness to the kidnapping was her younger cousin, Kaitlin Roe. Fourteen years later Gina still hasn’t been found and Kaitlin has returned to bring this cold case back to life. Kaitlin plans to do a podcast and bring focus back to Gina and see if maybe after all these years someone, somewhere has a clue to what happened. But soon after Kaitlin starts one of Gina’s best friends is murdered and Detective John Adler doesn’t think it’s a coincidence. Kaitlin not going to stop digging into her cousin’s disappearance even if it puts her into the cross hairs of a killer. Adler is determined to solve both cases and keep Kaitlin safe.

Overall, it’s an outstanding story. The characters are well written, aside from Kaitlin and Adler who are fantastic characters, Logan and Quinn were a nice addition to the story. Quinn’s unfavorable look on Kaitlin was a nice contrast to Adler’s unwavering belief in Kaitlin. Kaitlin and Adler are similar in their tenacity and while Adler may want to protect her he doesn’t treat Kaitlin like she’s inept. Kaitlin is no damsel in distress she is perfectly capable to handle herself and she doesn’t run off doing stupid things without thinking it through, after what happened to Gina she’s paranoid. All in all I loved this book.

A complex and twisted tale of love and obsession. Kept me guessing till near the end. Good characters with their own back stories.

Thankyou to Netgalley, the publisher and Mary Burton for being able to read this murder mystery..
I found the plot was good and gets you in from the very start. I liked the way the story was told through transcripts of interviews. It makes you feel like you are in the room as a part of the interview.

Mary Burton has written a suspenseful book that had me guessing what would happen until the end. The writing style of utilizing interviews that Kaitlin had conducted in the past placed in between the ongoing story was really intriguing and made me feel invested.

Loved the book. Mary Burton does not disappoint. She is a master of suspense and plot development. I recommend the book to everyone.

Fourteen years ago a teen aged girl called Gina was abducted. Only her cousin Kaitlin was there when it took place. She was never found, now Kaitlin is back and hoping to find answers. She starts up a podcast interviewing anyone that was involved in that fateful night. Someone isn't happy that she is back.In fact someone thinks its time people started to pay for there part in Gina's disappearance. As the killer closes in on Kaitlin can she work it out? Mary Burton knows how to keep her readers engrossed right to the end. I found it very hard to put down. Highly recommended for fans of romantic suspense. ARC received from net galley. In exchange for my honest review.

The story was interesting but so much about this book felt obvious and nothing was really shocking or took me by surprise. I was hoping for much more and i didn't get it. The romance was almost like an afterthought and wasn't as developed as it could have been.

Mary Burton is one of those authors that when I see she has a new book out, I have to grab it right away because I know I will be able to disappear for hours into a solid, intriguing plot with realistic, interesting characters for the length of the book. She never disappoints.
Fourteen years ago, Kaitlin Roe witnessed the abduction of her cousin, Gina Mason. There were four girls partying by the river. Two friends were picked up by a relative while Kaitlin and Gina stumbled towards Gina’s home. Scared to death, drunk and drugged when Gina was grabbed, the abductor told Kaitlin to run and she did. She only has vague memories of that night, but fourteen years of guilt.
Kaitlin has returned to Virginia to make a podcast of Gina’s disappearance. She will never forgive herself, but she hopes through new interviews to bring Gina’s cold case back to life, find out what really happened and bring Gina home. Kaitlin’s podcast interviews attract attention, but not everyone wants the truth to be known.
Detective John Adler is assigned a murder case that overlaps with Kaitlin’s interviews. Is it a coincidence or is the cold case leading to murder in the present day to cover up the past? As Adler works to solve the case, he also has to worry if Kaitlin could have provoked the killer to come for her next.
This book was written not only in chapters, but it is also divided by podcast interviews. The interviews add an interesting twist, because you do not know if the person being interviewed is telling the truth. Between the current plotline, the podcast interviews and Kaitlin’s memories of the past the mystery and suspense continually build. There are several red herrings and the ending was a surprise.
The relationship between Adler and Kaitlin was realistic with Adler not giving her certain information as it was an official investigation and her distrust of police since Gina’s disappearance. The romance was well paced and intertwined throughout the last half of story in a believable fashion. I was once again satisfied in every way with a Mary Burton book!
Thanks very much to Montlake Romance and Net Galley for allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't know how Mary Burton does it but she weaves such a mind blowing, edge of your seat tale!! It all starts with the 14 year old missing person case of Kaitlin's cousin Gina. Kaitlin returns home hoping to finally found out what happened on that dark country road all of those years ago. What she isnt expecting is that there may be more than one monster hiding in the darkness. With the help of a handsome detective maybe she'll stay alive long enough to find justice for the victims.

This book was given to me at my request and I provided this review voluntarily

When Kaitlin Roe, the only witness to the kidnapping of her cousin 14 years ago, returns to the town where the event took place to unearth the cold case and hopefully solve it, she’s thrown into a quagmire of buried secrets, reluctant witnesses, and a mystery that very few people want solved.

Kaitlin has a very strong character and the one haunting event in her life is that she couldn’t save her cousin Gina – a golden girl by anyone’s standards – from being kidnapped along a lonely road 14 years ago. Along with her cousin, 2 other girls were also present, and after a night spent drinking, they left Kaitlin and Gina alone to walk home. That walk sealed Gina’s fate and had haunted Kaitlin’s life all these years.

Now, over a decade later, Kate wants to solve the mystery of her cousin’s kidnapping.

Her Last Word was the first book I’ve read by author Mary Burton. While the story was strong, the plot convincing and sound and the main characters of Kaitlin Roe and Det. Adler really well drawn and complete – I liked them both! - the way the story was told in recurrent flashbacks from several voices through interview tapes, past and present, was difficult at times for me to follow. I think I might have liked it ore if it followed a linear story arc instead of the back and forth trek thru multiple voices that it took.
Having said that, the book is very well done and I recommend it highly.
Thankyou to Netgalley for allowing me an advanced copy in return for an honest opinion of the work.

I’ve read and enjoyed a number of Mary Burton’s romantic suspense novels and have generally found them to contain complex, intriguing mysteries with a reasonably-sized helping of romance that is enough to satisfy my shippy little heart. Unfortunately however, Ms. Burton’s latest standalone title, Her Last Word is a bit of a mixed bag. The mystery element is once again based on a cold-case, this time the disappearance of a teenaged girl some fourteen years earlier, and there are plenty of red herrings and wrong turns – but the way the story is constructed proved something of a barrier to my becoming fully engaged and the romance, such as it is, is perfunctory; the overall story would have made perfect sense without it and the book’s single sex scene feels as though it has been inserted for the sake of it.

Kaitlin Roe has spent much of the last fourteen years feeling guilty over what happened the night her cousin, Gina Mason, was abducted. Kaitlin, Gina and two of their friends, Jennifer and Erika had snuck away with a bottle of spiked lemonade and proceeded to get very drunk; Jennifer called her sister, Ashley, to come and get her and Erika, leaving Kaitlin and Gina to make their way home on their own. Not long after the other two girls were picked up, a man wearing a clown mask grabbed Gina and yelled at Kaitlin to run. Even though she was drunk and, as it was later revealed, drugged, Kaitlin refused to leave until her cousin’s assailant pulled a knife, put it to her throat and then, when Kaitlin still didn’t leave, cut off Gina’s ear while threatening to do worse if Kaitlin didn’t do as she was told. So she ran. And Gina was never seen again.

Fourteen years later, Kaitlin – after some years studying and working in Dallas – has returned to Richmond and is now a professor of communications at Virginia University. She had a reputation for being something of a ‘wild child’ – hanging out with the wrong boys, regularly getting drunk – but now older and wiser, she’s cleaned up her act and is determined to find out what happened to Gina. She decides to tap into the recent trend for making ‘true-crime’ podcasts, hoping that talking to people who knew Gina and were involved with the investigation may jog memories – either those of her contributors, or people who listen to the finished product.

Detective John Adler, recently returned to active duty after being injured in an arson attack, is called to the home of a young woman who has been found dead – obviously murdered – in her bathtub. Her throat was cut, and she was posed in such a way as to indicate that the killer wanted to humiliate her; there are no signs of sexual assault, but the perpetrator obviously planned meticulously, because there is no trace evidence at the scene or on the body. The dead woman is Jennifer Ralston, and as Adler and his partner canvass family, friends and neighbours, it emerges that for some time Jennifer had the feeling she was being followed. When Adler learns that Jennifer had been one of the girls present on the night of Gina Mason’s disappearance, and that she had recently met with Kaitlin Roe, he starts to believe that there may be a link between the recent murder and the fourteen-year-old cold case. And if his hunch is right, then digging up the past in her quest for the truth has put Kaitlin right in the killer’s sights.

The suspense plot is well-conceived and while the identity of Gina’s murderer is known fairly early on, the story focuses mostly on the hunt for Jennifer’s killer and whoever is out to harm Kaitlin, and on working out the links between the two cases. The identity of the villain isn’t obvious, and Adler pursues various leads, all of which point towards an ex- of Kaitlin’s and his friends. Or do they?

The story should have been compelling as Kaitlin gradually pieces together the events surrounding Gina’s disappearance and Adler pieces together the pieces relating to the present day murder – but the structure of the novel, in which the author switches back and forth between the current investigation, notes about Gina’s disappearance from over a decade earlier and transcripts, and recordings of Kaitlin’s interviews made it hard for me to engage fully with it. Normally, I enjoy stories that feature flashbacks or dual timelines, but this one just didn’t work for me. The interview/transcript chapters are quite short – some of them no more than a paragraph or two – but the switch was often jarring; I’d be into something meaty and then I found myself being pulled out of the action and into something else that had a completely different feel to it. I’m sure this is one of those times where ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, but the execution made it difficult for me to immerse myself in the mystery.

The central characters are somewhat underdeveloped, too. What we’re told about them is intriguing, but there’s little built on what we know. Adler comes from a wealthy family who don’t like his being a cop, and he was injured when he hauled his partner out of a burning building; his partner lost a leg and is undergoing gruelling rehab and Adler can’t help feeling guilty that he got out in one piece. The teenaged Kaitlin turned to drink and drugs as a way of coping with the pain of her brother’s suicide, and is stlll viewed with suspicion and dislike by many of the people she grew up with because of her reputation for being a liar, a drunk and ‘trouble’. I liked her bloody-mindedness in facing down those same people as part of her investigation, but otherwise, there’s no real depth to either protagonist, and the romantic elements are thrown into the last ten percent of the story; there’s no chemistry between them and they don’t spend a great deal of time together. I would have been quite happy had Adler and Kaitlin simply acknowledged a mutual attraction and agreed to see where it would take them at the end, rather than the rushed ILYs we actually get.

Her Last Word isn’t a terrible book by any means, but I won’t deny I was disappointed. I can’t, in all honesty, give it a wholehearted recommendation, and would advise anyone who has never read Mary Burton but wants to give her a try to make a start elsewhere.

Grade: C+