Twenty-Five Years Ago Today / Stacy Juba

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Mystery/Romantic Suspense

Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words

Availability
Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: YES Smashwords: YES Paper: YES
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Former newspaper reporter Stacy Juba is the winner of over a dozen writing awards. She is the author of several books, including Sink or Swim, another romantic suspense novel available for your Kindle, and some children’s picture books. She also has multiple young adult novels slated for publication over the next year. For more, see the author's website.

Description:

Editorial assistant Kris Langley’s duties for the Fremont Daily News are all of the assignments the regular reporters don’t want- things like writing obituaries and putting together the daily Twenty-Five Years Ago Today column. When Kris reads about an unsolved murder that happened twenty-five years before, she decides to investigate.

Appraisal:

I thought the concept of solving an old murder, instigated by the research for the newspaper column, was original. The character of Kris shows a lot of initiative and follow-through for someone so young. Although some of her motivation is professional advancement, a piece of her back-story lends credibility to her continued resolve when the going gets tough and also gets the reader more invested in the story.

This book is a good mystery with a resolution that should come as a surprise. The secondary romance storyline enhances the mystery storyline and gives the book a little spice (although not with anything explicit that should keep anyone away). Twenty-Five Years Ago Today has everything I look for in a romantic suspense; a mystery that keeps me guessing, a romance storyline that ends well, and characters that I like enough to care about what happens to them.

Format/Typo Issues:

No typos. The copy I reviewed (obtained from Smashwords) did have some formatting issues with the spaces between words sporadically missing.

Rating: **** Four stars