I'm so excited! Bouquet of Lies is scheduled for released in September. This sassy page-turned is all about love, murder and family secrets ripe for discovery. Not a paranormal this time, and published under the name Berta Lee Smith, Bouquet of Lies is a change of pace for me. I hope you'll pick up a copy when it's available. You'll find yourself on quite the thrill ride. Here's a quick synopsis: 

Wealthy, young, party girl Lacey Bouquet has never taken life or love too seriously. But all that changes when three things happen:  A man she would never think was her type enters her world and steals her heart. An ex-boyfriend and golden boy of her father’s company charms his way into her fragile younger sister’s life and turns the once-close sibling against her. Their father is murdered. Lacey, is heart-broken. She will never be able to mend the emotionally-distant relationship she had with him. 

What now? She can’t sit back and do nothing.  Especially when a private investigator comes to the house and she overhears him blackmail her grandfather. There are family secrets to be revealed and Lacey is determined to uncover every single one. What she discovers is unsavory and if that isn’t disturbing enough, the people she seeks out in order to learn the truth are murdered soon after she meets with them.  Then to make matters worse, the detective on the case seems to be suspicious of her! 

As Lacey struggles to find common ground with the love of her life, she implements a plan to expose the killer before it’s too late. She can’t share her idea with anyone, especially the man she loves or he’ll try to stop her. The stakes are high. If she succeeds, life is certain to be better than ever. But if she fails, all will be lost, including her life.

To use a quote from this book about a movie Kearsley's character watches, this story has "...a murky plot and a pace that dragged intolerably." 

I loved Kearsley's The Winter Sea. I was hoping for the same experience here, but it never came. Susanna Kearsley is a talented writer and her prose was wondrous but many times it caused the story to drag and sometimes I had to reread a passage to be certain of what the author was trying to tell me.

I never got lost in the story. In fact, even though I liked the characters and I did care about them, I didn't CARE. I mean, I wanted their archaeology dig to be as they wanted it to be, but in the long run, did it matter? It seemed little was at stake. Never did I get so involved that I read and read and lost myself in the plot or characters. I kept wanting the story to get where it was going, but I didn't know where it was going and I don't mean that in a good way where you're asking yourself, "What's going to happen next! I must find out." I mean it in this vein, "What is the point of all this?"

Well, it turns out The Shadowy Horses has a point and a clever climax. It's just that the whole plot is so subtle I had no idea danger was lurking. That may be a good thing for some or even many, but I would have liked a bigger hint that these people (or some of them) were in big trouble. 

I gave this book 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads and Amazon.