#Thriller Thursday #The Wrong Bones ( Widow’s Island Novella 10) by Melinda Leigh @Montlake

Synopsis:
A frantic chase to catch a grave robber reveals a startling discovery in this tenth installment of the Widow’s Island novella series by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh.

Deputy Tessa Black spots a man disturbing a grave in the local cemetery and gives chase. But when Tessa catches him, she learns that the ghoulish trespasser wasn’t robbing graves; he was burying a box of bones.

With the help of her fiancé, park ranger Logan Wilde, Tessa discovers that the remains belong to a missing teenager from a nearby island. After the girl disappeared nine months ago, police labeled her a runaway. Now, though, it’s clear the teenager was murdered.

When the only witness is an uncooperative teenager, Tessa and Logan must find the killer before the boy becomes the next target.

Publisher: Montlake
Expected Publication Date: October 25th, 2022

Widow Island Series:
1 Close to the Bone
​2 A Bone to Pick
3 Whisper of Bones
​4 Bred in the Bone
5 Below the Bones
​6 A Broken Bone
​7 Buried Bones
​8 The Lost Bones
9 Bone Deep
10 The Wrong Bones

My thoughts:
The Wrong Bones is the tenth novella in Widow Island series written by Melinda Leigh and Kendra Elliot. If you have been following the series, you are surely going to enjoy the happy finale, but all good things come to an end and this is the last instalment in the series. It was amazing to see this wonderful collaboration with the stories from the two authors (Melinda Leigh wrote books 2,3, 6,7, and 10, Kendra Elliot -1,4,5,8, and 9) merging seemlessly into one cohesive narrative.

Melinda Leigh’s novella are written from the point of view of Deputy Tessa Black, while Kendra Elliot’s ones focus on Tessa’s best friend Cate, a former FBI agent, who also happens to be Tessa’s fiance Logan’s sister.

Tessa Black has a complicated family life. Her mother has been diagnosed with an early onset dementia and Tessa is taking care of both her and Tessa’s much younger half-sister Patience. While Tessa knows nothing is going to change the course of her mother’s dementia, she tries to help Patience have as normal and stable life as possible in the circumstances. Luckily, Logan Wilde, Tessa’s fiance and the only park ranger on the island, is her rock of strength, and the whole island community pulls together to take care of Tessa’s mother.

Tessa responds to frantic calls of three kids who have spotted a stranger digging a grave at the island’s cemetery. Although the chase Tessa gives the stranger isn’t successful, the man drops a box he was trying to bury in the grave and the box is full of human bones. The remains belong to a teenage girl who was clearly murdered, but who was she and who is the monster behind the crime? Suspects abound and Tessa and Logan have to move fast to make sure the killer doesn’t get away with the crime.

The pace was excellent and there was a lot of action packed into the story which culminated in a nail-biting finish that would have made Hollywood action movie writers proud. Fans of Melinda Leigh know she has a very engaging writing style that compels her readers to keep turning pages until the small hours.

Thank you to NetGalley and Montlake for the review copy, provided in exchange for an honest opinion.