Love You More, Lisa Gardner

So much for happy endings.

At the end of Live to Tell, DD and Alex were getting together. As had Danielle and her man. The baddies had gotten what they deserved. And for once, it didn't seem like anyone got away with murder. Sounds like a happy ending for me.

And now it's all ruined.

Sorta.

We start with a State Trooper accused of killing her husband - an abuser. Only then they realize the kid is gone.

Troopers responded to the death at the house, but fucked up the crime scene before they realized there was a missing kid.

So, Ms. DD gets called in.

And everything is wonky from the get-go.

The Trooper, Tessa, is weird. The timeline is weird. The story itself is weird. Everything adds up at face value, but not when you scrape the surface. It's like.....2+2=4, right? But then if you look at decimals, you find out, actually, it's 5.

See what I'm saying. And Tessa is definitely a 5.

So DD starts investigating. Now, the case is this weird mob conspiracy. Basically here's what you need to know.


DD is preggers! Yup, she and Alex have been gettin' busy! DD is understandably freaked out. And she hasn't even told Alex yet. It makes investigating a missing/kidnapped child that much harder for her. Bobby is working with her, but she doesn't want to tell him either. She's still trying to process. It's not until Tessa figures it out and comments about it that Bobby finds out.

So, that's the happy part of the ending.

Next up, yes, Tessa does have a tragic past. So, we're still writing based on the same play book. However, it's more her bestie's tragedy that she took the blame for. And we're still keeping our plots convoluted. OK, so Tessa's husband has a gambling problem. He gets tangled up with the mob, along with his bestie, another Trooper. So, in order to get rid of the debt, the mastermind of the whole thing has the husband killed and the wife framed, using the kid for collateral. The idea is that Tessa will then take the fall for wiping out the Trooper's Union pension fund.

If you're confused, it's ok. It's pretty crazy.

Really, it just seems like a lot of work for minimal pay off. If I remember correctly, the pension fund was only like $200k, which granted is a lot of money. But it's doesn't seem to to be worth all that effort. Why not just take it and run? Or take it and frame Tessa? Or someone else? Or the husband's best friend. Or the husband! There just seem to be a lot of other more logical plans.

At the end, Tessa gets her daughter back, but her husband, for all his faults, is dead. Not to mention her daughter experienced a terrible trauma. That's the not so happy part of the ending.

Finally, we're back with killers running free. Look, I get the idea that when someone has your child, you go to hell and back to rescue them. But if you kill someone to get them back, you have to face the consequences! If your reason is justified, then prove it. But not Tessa. She kills her husband's best friend. She kills the hit man who killed her husband. She kills the woman working with the mastermind. Bobby kills the mastermind, but Tessa's body count is significantly higher.

And nothing happens. The woman she kills is deemed defense of her daughter, and I'm 100% on board with that one. But the other 2? Yeah, she framed other people for those.

So, we have another woman who has literally gotten away with murder.

I'm just getting a little tired of the same outline. The plots may be mostly different, even interesting, but the basics all seem the same.

Still, this book was much better than the first 3. So I gotta give DD some more time.

Plus, now that she's gonna be a new mom....

Love You More, Lisa Gardner