A review by b0okcupidity
Untraceable by Laura Griffin

4.0


Reading this book was an experience akin to exploring a new city by car. All the sights are new, all the metropolitan smells of industry are charming. The architecture is captivating, the interesting little blemishes have a story all their own to tell. Your neck hurts from all the head swiveling trying to take it all in...until you cross that invisible line into suburbia. All too soon the houses start to look the same, all painted in blasé shades of brown. Instead of charming little boutiques and corner coffee shops, you’re stuck at stoplight after stoplight of big-box store intersections.

I really enjoyed my first Laura Griffin outing. For the first 60% of the book I was totally hooked and my head was spinning while I devoured all the words on the page. The pacing was excellent, the mystery was super interesting, and the characters were far from perfect but I cared about them. And then suddenly, we took a left turn into the mundane. Abruptly we slowed waaay down, nearly halting the suspense to deal with a clichéd romance
Spoilercomplete with a baby plot! Argh!
.

This derailed me a bit. It's not that I don't enjoy the relationship angst. I do! It's not that I don't get people have relationship issues. Of course! I just...well, I just wanted to get back to the 'suspense' aspect of the romantic suspense.

And that's the highest praise I can give for Untraceable. The suspense/mystery was so well done that I didn't want to read any of the kissy stuff that made me pick up the book in the first place. Lately I have read mostly romances and so obviously I look forward to working out vulnerabilities and past hurts and blah blah blah...but not here. I just wanted to nail the bad guy (and not the good way either, with, like a gun or something painful).

Luckily we got back to the good stuff, we got messy, and there were a few satisfying surprises. The trip back to our hotel gave some new vantage points. It was a great little day all around.