Secrets Never Die (Morgan Dane #5) by Melinda Leigh @MelindaLeigh1 #bookreview #suspense #romance

Title: Secrets Never Die

Author: Melinda Leigh

Publisher: Montlake Romance

Publication Date: March 19, 2019

Page Count: 326

My rating: 5 stars

About the book:

The #1 Amazon Charts bestselling series continues as Morgan Dane and PI Lance Kruger fight for the innocence of a young murder suspect—if only they could find him.

When a retired sheriff’s deputy is shot to death in his home, his troubled teenage stepson, Evan, becomes the prime suspect. Even more incriminating, the boy disappeared from the scene of the crime.

Desperate to find her son, Evan’s mother begs PI Lance Kruger for help. She knows her son is innocent. Kruger and defense attorney Morgan Dane want to believe that too, but the evidence against the boy is damning. Just as the trail goes cold, another deputy vanishes. His shocking connection to Evan’s stepfather throws the investigation into chaos as Lance and Morgan fear the worst…that Evan is the killer’s new target.

With so many secrets to unravel, will Lance and Morgan find him before it’s too late?

Secrets Never Die by Melinda Leigh is the fifth installment of the thrilling romantic suspense Morgan Dane series. Each book in the series features a new case to solve so they could be read as standalone novels if choosing to do so. However, there is character development that carries over book to book so it’s always best to read the series as a whole. This series is also a spin off of another of the author’s but I have not read the first and never noticed anything missing from these novels or felt as if I had missed anything.

Morgan Dane is the lead character in the series, a mother of three that had returned to her home town after the loss of her husband. Morgan was a former prosecutor but she is now on the other side of the courtroom taking on cases as a defense attorney. With every new case Morgan works with her former high school boyfriend turned P.I., Lance Kruger.

This newest case for the team to solve comes when there is a murder and the teenage step son of the victim goes missing. The mother contacts and hires Morgan, Lance and their partner, Sharp, to find her son when she is determined that he is also a  victim and had been kidnapped but police turn him into a suspect for the murder.

This entire romantic suspense series has been a favorite of mine from the  beginning. Each read is action packed and oozing with suspense from the opening pages until the  very end. These are also lighter on the  romance side with a slowly developing clean romance storyline carrying over from book to book which is a nice change of pace for a genre that usually rushes the  relationships to the  steamy side. With this series I’ve definitely become a fan and will continue reading any from Melinda Leigh.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

#1 Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh is a fully recovered banker. A lifelong lover of books, she started writing as a way to preserve her sanity when her youngest child entered first grade. During the next few years, she joined Romance Writers of America, learned a few things about writing a novel, and decided the process was way more fun than analyzing financial statements. Melinda’s debut novel, She Can Run, was nominated for Best First Novel by the International Thriller Writers. She’s also garnered Golden Leaf and Silver Falchion Awards, along with two nominations for a RITA and three Daphne du Maurier Awards. Her other novels include She Can Tell, She Can Scream, She Can Hide, She Can Kill, Midnight Exposure, Midnight Sacrifice, Midnight Betrayal, Midnight Obsession, Hour of Need, Minutes to Kill, Seconds to Live, Say You’re Sorry, Her Last Goodbye, Bones Don’t Lie, and What I’ve Done. She holds a second-degree black belt in Kenpo karate; teaches women’s self-defense; and lives in a messy house with her husband, two teenagers, a couple of dogs, and two rescue cats.