Sunday Suspense: Love you More (Tessa Leoni #1) by Lisa Gardner

 

Hello, Fellow Book Worms and Book Dragons,

   

  Love You More is written by Lisa Gardner, and it is published by Penguin Random House under their Bantam Books imprint. In this fifth installment Detective D.D. Warren is reunited with her former lover, Bobby Dodge. Dodge requests Warren to join him at the site of a homicide. State Trooper Tessa Leoni has shot and killed her husband, and her daughter, Sophie, is missing. Married to Brian Darby for three years, Tessa and Sophie appeared to be happy with the merchant marine. Although their tough schedules kept them busy, Tessa and Brian seemed to be a happy couple. But Leoni is severely beaten and her husband lies on the kitchen floor with three slugs in his chest. 

   With no defensive wounds and a story that seems to change with every interview, Tessa Leoni is looking more like a calculated murderer than a battered wife. But what events of Tessa's past have come to roost in her seemingly idyllic life? What happened to force a state trooper to kill her husband? And where is six-year-old Sophie?

  Love You More is told in two narratives featuring a third-person presentation with  D.D. and a first-person account from Tessa. I enjoyed Tessa Leoni due to her being a complicated character loaded with secrets. Her memories tripped me up on occasion as the lies were remembered as truths. This kept me guessing throughout this novel. She was clever and determined and that made for a tense read as her story was finally laid out for the reader to see. I was particularly moved by Tessa’s daughter, Sophie, who was such a brilliant light in her mother’s eyes. 

  I read Love You More in part with the audiobook narrated by Kirsten Potter (handling Detective Warren's part) and Katie MacNichol (presenting Tessa's story). They matched one another’s pace, making the different styles more cohesive. An excellent team-up.    

  I had a good time with Love You More. I gave it four out of five stars. It was a good mystery that had me guessing until the end.   

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