5-Star Review of "The Stronghold"

Review of The Stronghold

by Lisa Carter

Drug violence, revenge killings, and kidnapping are nothing new along the U.S.-Mexican border. But now teenage girls are disappearing from the Apache reservations of Arizona and New Mexico.

Apache tribal cop Pilar To-Clanny and FBI Special Agent Alex Torres have a long and tumultuous history. When someone close to them disappears, Pilar and Alex must risk everything to rescue the child, including facing the unresolved issues of the past, and venture into the no-man's land of the drug cartels.

Can Pilar and Alex work together to stop a sadistic killer before he strikes again? On a quest to rescue those they love, who will rescue them?

MY REVIEW:   What a fascinating mystery and romance The Stronghold turned out to be!   Pilar To-Clanny is now working as the Apache tribal cop on the reservation and Alex Torres is now working as an FBI Special Agent and they are placed in each others' paths yet again to solve the crimes of the missing young people after discovering bodies on the reservation.   It has been a long long time since Pilar and Alex were young and in love and there is a great deal of anger, hurt, and unresolved issues creating baggage between the two.  They find clues pointing to thee Mexican drug cartels in the crimes and when her son and his grandmother run off to try and save Tagalong, they have to choice but to return to the very place that holds an important piece of their own past history.  Can they work together without killing each other?  Can they save the ones they love from the wicked person who is kidnapping and killing innocent lives?   

I'll be honest, at first, I thought this might be a boring book and that I might find a language barrier as the first pages used some of the language of the local tribes. But I was quickly very pleasantly surprised as I fell in love with Pilar and Alex and just wanted their open wounds to heal.   I could see they were broken but I didn't yet know why.  I was compelled to read to see what their history entailed and to find out who is carrying out hideous acts.  This novel could easily be an episode of Criminal Minds.   I am a huge fan of Criminal Minds so this book fed my addiction.  The romance was an added bonus.   

I rated this book 5 stars and would like to read more books by Lisa Carter.  

I received a copy of this novel from netgalley in exchange for my honest review. 

About the Author:

Lisa Carter was always the child who made up epic tales involving prairie schooners or interplanetary voyages for the neighborhood kids to re-enact during summer vacation. Now, she and her husband have two daughters and make their home in North Carolina. When she isn't writing, Lisa enjoys traveling to romantic locales, quilting and researching her next exotic adventure. She is the author of romantic suspense novels, Carolina Reckoning and Beneath a Navajo Moon, Under a Turquoise Sky and Vines of Entanglement. Aloha Rose, part of the Quilts of Love series, and Coast Guard Courtship are contemporary romances. Her latest romantic suspense novel, Beyond the Cherokee Trail, releases September, 2015.

http://www.lisacarterauthor.com