Leanne Kale Sparks: The Wrong Woman

In her debut novel, Leanne Kale Sparks shows what happens when you mess with the Wrong Woman:
 

FBI Agent Kendall Beck, is on the one of the toughest cases, a missing child case that turns into a child abuse case and Kendall will stop at nothing to bring justice to the victim. But everything is de-railed when Kendall's best friend and roommate goes missing while driving her vehicle. Kendall wants to be part of the investigation but it is out of her jurisdiction, and when Gwen turns up dead, Kendall drops everything, she needs to find the killer as it seems to be connected to Kendall’s past.

 

I feel like you can tell that this is a debut novel as Kale Sparks tries to take on too much in one book. There are three very different stories/cases presented in this book, all of which could have been their own books. I think this is why the story felt unfocused at times.The book starts out very interesting with the separate cases and you do not know how the investigations are going to intersect or how the investigators are going to work together and it takes around 20% of the book to get there.

I felt like for the most part of the story she did not focus on the child abduction/abuse case, like it was not important enough for her and solely wanted to help/focus on her friend's disappearance. It was like she forgot about her actual job/case to the point that it felt like Kale Sparks forgot about the other case and the direction she wanted to take the story. It is not till the end that she seems to finally remember she had a case she was supposed to work. I think that Kale Sparks just didn't know what type of book she wanted to write, so changed focus many times.

I liked Kendall as a character when you first meet her and she does what I think a lot of people would do with a child abuser but after that point I felt like i she didn't grow as a character or as an investigator.

I think that Kale Sparks has the ability to write and does have great ideas for stories to follow with her characters presented here, but i think there needs to be follow less is more. There does not need to be multiple cases happening at once in order to captivate their audience. A good who-done-it does not need this. However, I look forward to seeing how Kale Sparks matures as an author.

Cheers!!!

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