Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: December 3, 2019
Source: Publisher
Buy it here: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Audible
Nalini Singh Reading Order
On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates.
That is until one fateful summer—and several vanished bodies—shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement to not look back. But they can’t run from the past forever.
Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape.
It’s not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets come to light.
Prepare to be swept away to a small New Zealand town that’s as beautiful as it is treacherous in A Madness of Sunshine. Nalini Singh’s thriller debut is as engaging and evocative as I would expect from a writer of her caliber.
Golden Cove is an isolated community where everyone knows everyone. But do they really? For even in a place like this, people have their secrets. Anahera Rawiri, a gifted, renowned pianist, has returned home after years away. Anahera is strong, kind, and recovering from pain and betrayal. Everything and nothing has changed about Golden Cove when Anahera returns; many of the people she once knew as well as herself are familiar strangers. The most interesting new addition? Detective Will Gallagher, Golden Cove’s one-man police force. Will is as strong and focused as Anahera. He also has demons of his own he’s facing, ones that are the reason he was sent out to the bush. Sparks fly immediately between Will and Anahera, but it’s their “otherness” – Anahera’s from her time away and Will from his newness to Golden Cove – that draws them together when tragedy strikes and a young woman goes missing. Her disappearance stirs up old ghosts and hidden shame from one summer years ago when three other women vanished.
Ms. Singh serves up an interesting double mystery in A Madness of Sunshine. The present day search for a missing young woman intertwines with the disappearance of three hikers back when Anahera was a teenager and each mystery is engaging in its own right. I loved watching the pieces unfold, loved how the lush landscape Ms. Singh details plays into the story itself. I also enjoyed uncovering the layers of the town and its residents. The sordid secrets were all interesting as they were unearthed and I liked feeling like I was digging deeper into many of the characters with each passing page. Though it is set a world away, in many ways A Madness of Sunshine reminded me of Nora Roberts’s romantic suspense titles from fifteen – twenty years ago (think Carolina Moon). It’s not the plots themselves, but rather the cadence of the story and the patterns of the characters that felt familiar (not a bad thing). The only downside is that I felt the mysteries weren’t too…well…mysterious.
A Madness of Sunshine is beautiful and dark, just like the world of Golden Cove. Even though I would have wished for a few more surprising moments, I still thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ms. Singh’s writing sucked me in each time I picked up the book and I loved watching Anahera and Will put the pieces together over the course of the story. Though my first love will always be Ms. Singh’s paranormal romances, I would dive into another thriller by her in a heartbeat.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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