Wild Hearts is the first novel in Sharon Sala's, Secrets and Lies series, and it begins with a Prologue in which 4 high school friends in Mystic, West Virginia, are celebrating their high school graduation by getting drunk and joyriding along the local roads. Behind the wheel is Connie Bartlett, they're all piled into the new pink Cadillac she got for graduation that day, and all four of them are drunk--never a smart move, and, as you'd expect, they crash head-on into a tree. Connie, goes through the windshield and is found dead at the scene, and her three passengers, Dick Phillips, Betsy Pass and Paul Jackson, are all severely wounded, yet somehow manage to survive their injuries.

Fast forward several decades and we now meet Dick Phillips as an adult and a widower, as he's tending to his late wife's chickens for the eggs he sells. When someone he knows stops in to buy a couple of dozen, that same person, still unnamed, attacks him, knocks him to the ground, throws a noose around his neck, and hangs him from the barn rafters, and that single event is what triggers the events in this intriguing novel, and probably the ones to follow it, since the identity of the killer is still unknown as this novel concludes. This fascinating tale of intrigue, murder and love gets 4.5 stars from this reader.

Dallas Phillips, Dick's daughter, moved away from home to the big city more than 6 years earlier to pursue a career in broadcast journalism, and she's been quite successful at it. When she receives a call telling her that her father has been found dead, an apparent suicide, she can't get home fast enough. To add to her stress, there's the realization that she'll also be seeing the wonderful man she loved and left behind when she set out for the big city to pursue her goals. That man is Trey Jakes, who is now the small town's Police Chief, and he's been in love with Dallas since he was six years old. Although her father's death is a terrible reason for Dallas to return home, it's also the opportunity Trey has long been awaiting, a chance to reconnect with the only woman he's ever loved.

But this is more than just a second-chance at love novel, and more than a simple whodunit murder mystery too. There are feral former dogfighting dogs roaming the area to deal with, plus the fact that Dallas learns that her father was all too close to losing the farm that has been in the family for well over a century, and her strong belief that there is no way on earth that her father would take his own life. After Dallas is attacked and injured by one of those feral dogs, Trey moves into her house to care for her and hopefully to rekindle their former relationship, but there's no shortage of reasons for him to be out doing his job, and for Dallas to end up as the lone target for more than one evil-doer.

What I've always found so special about Sharon Sala's novels is the heartwarming way in which she draws you into small town life, and into the hearts and minds of the characters in those towns. She always imbues her stories with a sense of homecoming, no matter where that might be, and the goodness, kindness, caring, and sense of community that hearkens back to an earlier time when small town life was far more common than it is today, and a time in which people in those small towns were more willing to help one another in good times and bad.

As is also the case in Ms. Sala's novels, she hooks you into her novels from the very first page, and the intrigue, suspense, murder, and romance she writes so well, make her books impossible to put down page-turners right through to the end. In Wild Hearts, Trey and Dallas are strong, honest and so well-drawn that in short order they begin to feel like your next-door neighbors and family as well. The heat these two generate together isn't overly graphic, but instead, their relationship and feelings for one another are genuine, caring and heartwarming.

If you're in the mood for a great read, one with suspense, mystery, intrigue, and a great second chance at love trope, look no further. This novel gets high marks for the all of the aforementioned. Yes, it ends in an HEA, but there's also that cliffhanger ending I mentioned earlier, but this story and these characters are so well-defined, compelling, and multi-dimensional rather than being upset at the cliffhanger, I'm eagerly awaiting a return to this town and it's cast of characters in the upcoming novels in this series.

I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this book. The opinions expressed are my own.