Afraid To Die
To Die, Book #4
By Lisa Jackson
ISBN# 9781420118506
Author’s Website:  http://www.lisajackson.com/

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli are back in Lisa Jackson’s newest installment of the To Die series, Afraid to Die.  This time Selena’s past that she has worked so hard to bury is coming back to haunt her in the form of an old boyfriend and a son that she gave up for adoption.  All the secrets Selena has tried so hard to keep from those around her in her ‘new’ life are slowly being revealed and the floodgates on her emotions she’s kept hidden inside are finally breaking open.

Its Christmas time in Grizzly falls, which means another serial killer, is on the loose.  This one is abducting women and freezing them to death.  He then sculpts them into ice sculptures that he displays around town.  And, strange enough each victim has been found with a piece of Selena’s stolen jewelry on them.

Then, a teen on the run breaks into Selena’s house as she is coming home, followed by an old flame, Dylan O’Keefe, who is trying to catch him.  Seeing Dylan brings back a lot of old memories that Selena would rather not remember, but that’s nothing compared to the emotions invoked by the young teen, Gabriel, who Selena is convinced is the son she gave up for adoption when she was 16 after being raped and impregnated by her cousin, Emillio.  Now she’ll do anything to protect him.  So when the killer gets his hands on Gabriel, she has no choice, but to act even though she knows it’s a trap.

I’ve been waiting a couple of months to get my hands on this book.  I was pretty disappointed with its predecessor, Born to Die, but was hoping it was just a fluke and that this installment would have the heart-pumping action I’ve come to expect from Lisa Jackson.

I was sad that this book had a pretty slow start to it and I was really starting to feel the ‘here we go again’ vibes.  I don’t even think the problem was that too much was going on, but more that the story was switching narrators so often that it was sometimes hard to determine what was going on in the beginning of the book.  But not to worry, once the storyline was outlined and things started going good, they kept getting better.  I ended up really enjoying the book and its suspenseful conclusion.

One thing that I didn’t like was that the book never explained why the killer had a vendetta against Selena.  Surely he wasn’t doing all of this over a chance meeting at a grocery store.  He had worked for her for how many years after that as her handyman?  That just doesn’t pan out for me, there has to be more to it, but it was never fully explained.

It was nice to see that the seemingly perfect Selena Alvarez isn’t so perfect after all; that she like everyone else, has skeletons in her closet as well.  What happened to her at the hands of her own cousin was horrible and really made you feel for her.  I was glad to see that she could come to grips with her past and that by the end of the book she was able to start a relationship with her long lost son.  And, of course with her old flame, Dylan, as well, although I was expecting her to hook up with Grayson until O’Keefe came to town!  But I really did enjoy Alvarez and Dylan together and hope that we will get to see more of them (along with more Santana, since there wasn’t nearly enough of him in this one) in the next installment of the series.  No word on the next book in the series, but I assume there will be one since the whole Padgett storyline is still left hanging out there.

I enjoyed this book and think any crime and mystery fan will as well, especially those that are already familiar with the series!  I’m looking forward to the next installment, which hopefully won’t be too far into the future!