Dani Pettrey: The Deadly Shallows

By Kelly Bridgewater

A mass shooting.
A stolen weapon capable of immense destruction. 
A painful secret that threatens to tear two hearts apart.

CGIS Agent Noah Rowley is rocked to the core when he learns of a mass shooting raging on his Coast Guard base. He and his team stop the attack, but not before numerous innocent lives are lost. Furious and grief-stricken, he determines to do whatever is needed to bring the mastermind behind the attack to justice.

Coast Guard flight medic Brooke Kesler evacuates the scene of the shooting in a helicopter carrying the only surviving gunman. Gravely wounded, the man whispers mysterious information to Brooke that immediately paints a target on her back.

As Brooke and Noah race to uncover answers, emotions between them ignite. Noah struggles to protect Brooke at all costs and to conceal the secret that prevents him from becoming what he longs to be--the right man for her.

Everything is at stake as a horrifying truth emerges. . . .

The mass shooting wasn't the end game. It was only the beginning.

 

My Thoughts:

The Deadly Shallows by Dani Pettrey starts with a bombing at a military graduation ceremony, and then takes off from there. Of course, fans of romantic suspense novels will be excited with all the suspense and the dead bodies appearing everywhere. There is a smaller mystery to go along with the initial bombing in the opening scene that needs to be solved also. On the other hand, the romance is a little too Hallmarky for me. Too many emotions. It took over the suspense a lot. It made the suspense appear not as important as the budding relationship between two separate couples. When Pettrey did show the scenes with the couples and their relationship, I usually skimmed through until I reached the suspense part. Not a fan of much romance in my stories. It is okay to deep the characters, but when there are bombs going off and dead bodies piling up, that should be the focus of the overall story, not the romance. Speaking of things that Pettrey does well is her ability to craft a suspenseful scene with plenty of action and nice description to see the action as it plays out in a reader’s imagination. The final climactic moment was nicely detailed and came to a quick and effective resolution. Overall, The Deadly Shallows by Dani Pettrey does fit nicely in with her previous novels and the romantic suspense genre, but the romance was a little over the top for me. If readers enjoyed her previous stories, then I suggest readers dive into this one too.

I received a complimentary copy of The Deadly Shallows by Dani Pettrey from Bethany House Publishing, but the opinions stated are all my own.

My Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

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