Brought to you by OBS reviewer Jerjen

Shooting Scars by Karina Halle is the second book in The Artists Trilogy series and it is every bit as good as the first book.  It is full of action, suspense and romance, all blended together to create a good book.

The second book continues the story of Ellie, Camden and Javier.  Ellie has agreed to go with Javier, a former lover, to make sure that Camden is safe.  She has made the ultimate sacrifice to save her one true love.  But she does not know how deep Javier’s hatred runs and she soon realizes she has made a grave mistake.  She realizes she has to go along with his revenge plans if there is any chance to save Camden.  But that does not mean she cannot plan her own revenge and be ready with her plan if the opportunity presents itself.  And she is very good at plotting revenge and getting even.

Camden will never forget Ellie and he is willing to do anything, and I mean anything, to save her and claim her as his own.  He will have to elude the police and come up with his own plan to be successful.  Not an easy task, but one that he must succeed at to get his true love back.  He has a darker side to his personality that will help him but he is afraid that once that side makes an appearance he may not be able to hide it away again.

One thing I really like about this book was that it is divided between Ellie chapters and Camden chapters.  This allowed me to fast forward to read more chapters about one or the other and then go back and read about the other character,  Sometimes you just have to read as much as you can about one or the other, and I found myself doing this quite a lot.   There is so much suspense at times that I had no choice but to find out what was going to happen before I could focus on the other character.

There were many twists and turns throughout the book and most of the time I did not see them coming.  The suspense started building from the first page and never let up. The author is very descriptive in her writing style and she uses this effectively to build layer upon layer of suspense.  I was pulled in from the very beginning and there was no let down at anytime.

Another thing I really like about this book are the characters.  This book is very character-driven and the author does a superb job of giving all the characters many human traits.  And I am not talking about good traits that make them seem near perfect.  I am  talking about traits that will land them in jail and make them at times seem mean and unsavory.  But that does not really matter because you still want them to triumph (except for Javier).  These are people I would never be friends with in real life, but through reading their story I like them and care what happens to them.  I am pretty sure this is not an easy thing to accomplish, but Karina Halle does it masterfully.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a character-driven suspense read.  I would not recommend this book to a young adult or anyone who is offended by less-than-clean language.  But if that does not offend you and you enjoy gritty suspense, then you should definitely read this book.  I would suggest reading book one first (Sins And Needles) so that you can see the character growth and development.  In my opinion this added another dimension to the reading.  And there is a sneak peek at the end of the book for the third book in the trilogy, which is an added bonus.

*OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*