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Gemma Monroe is a detective in Cedar Valley, CO. She's six months pregnant and stressing over her relationship with the baby's father. Her life gets a lot more complicated when a traveling circus comes to town and one of their workers is murdered. The killing reveals some dark secrets related to a 30-year old cold case. Gemma will discover that digging for the truth when it means revealing past dark deeds can be very, very dangerous.

I really like this series! I accidentally jumped in at book three, Lost Lake, a few months ago, and finally backtracked to read the first book. I like Gemma Monroe as a main character. She is very good at her job. She's intelligent, thorough, ethical, and determined, but being driven comes with a price. The unsolved murders of two young boys in 1985 haunts her. She has nightmares about the dead boys. Her determination to solve the case and get justice for the victims almost breaks her at times.

The mystery moves at a nice pace with plenty of suspense. I figured out some of the clues, but the ending surprised me. I love it when a book holds a few surprises back until the very end. Nicely done! I'm glad I finally jumped back to re-start this series at the beginning. It isn't necessary to read the books in order, but I do understand the characters -- especially Gemma -- a lot better now that I've read the first book.

There are three books in this series, with a fourth book, Shatter the Night, coming out in December 2019. I can't wait! For now, I'm moving on to the second book, A Season to Lie. ( )

This was quite an interesting story that attempted to connect 2 different crimes. I really liked the main character, who had a lot of spunk and had a really good backstory. There were a bunch of other characters that were also introduced, but I wish the author had spent more time in developing relationships between them and Gemma; most of them were pretty well explained but some (like the one with her boyfriend) were really not developed at all, which was a shame. The story itself had a good pacing and I found myself intrigued as to how everything would come together. I also love everything to do with circuses, so having that be a part of the story was a little treat for me! The story itself was going really well but the ending was a bit rushed, and clichéd. As usual, the perp spills the beans on everything, but the explanation wasn't as well formed as I liked. Overall, this was an interesting story that had good pacing and a strong main character so I give this a 3.5/5 stars.

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This is a debut novel that doesn't read like one. Emily Littlejohn has a beautiful, lyrical writing style that captivated me from beginning to end. She's also created a nuanced main character that I definitely want to read more about. Gemma Monroe's parents were killed in a car wreck, and she was raised by her grandmother who is now in the grip of dementia. Gemma is pregnant, and her partner is off in the wilds of Alaska on a geological survey. Their relationship is complicated; Brody is a man Gemma loves deeply, and she trusts him with her life-- she just doesn't trust him with her heart. So she's got all sorts of personal troubles compounded by being forced to work with a fellow officer whose ethics have been questionable on more than one occasion.

Inherit the Bones has a fascinating premise that kept its hooks in me throughout the book, but it's one you can't really talk about for fear of giving things away. Whodunit was easily deduced by me this time around, but with the character of Gemma, the storyline, and the way Emily Littlejohn writes, I didn't care. I'm looking forward to more. ( )

Gemma Monroe has a good life in Cedar Valley, Colorado. She has a job she enjoys with the local sheriff's office. She has family that she loves, and she and her partner are awaiting the birth of their first child. Now if she could only trust her life-partner and her colleagues, things might be as close to perfect as possible. While Gemma deals with her lack of trust issues with her life-partner and colleagues, she must deal with a murder case that seems to open the proverbial Pandora's Box of secrets in her hometown. The murder of a young man with the traveling circus was strange, and the case becomes even more bizarre when the identity of the dead teen is revealed to be none other than the previously presumed deceased son of the mayor. Gemma realizes that the victim's disappearance three years earlier is probably related to his murder, so she begins to dig into his background and family. Strangely, her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, warns her away from the grandfather of the victim. Gemma is then relegated to partnering a senior colleague on the case rather than leading the investigation. Adding to the overall strangeness of this case and investigation, Gemma is finding notes and messages in an attempt to get her to stop her investigation and then the newest deputy is severely injured in a hit-and-run accident. Is it possible that this murder could be tied to the town's previously unsolved murder cases from 30 years ago?

I found Inherit the Bones to be a fast-paced and wholly engaging read. I enjoyed the small-town environment, the angst from Gemma's relationships with her life-partner, grandparents, and colleagues, not to mention the murder and its investigation. Yes, obviously there's a lot more going on in Inherit the Bones than a current murder and its investigation, but you'll have to read the book to find out for yourself. I enjoyed reading about all of the characters, especially the circus folk. The small town of Cedar Valley and its history is just as important to the story as the characters. Inherit the Bones is filled with quirky characters, plausible scenarios, and intrigue upon intrigue that kept me reading until the end just to find out whodunit and why (no, I'm not going to tell you who did it or why . . . read the book!). Inherit the Bones is the first in a series by Ms. Littlejohn and I'm looking forward to reading more about Gemma Monroe in the future.

Review originally posted on 12/28/2016 at: http://www.thebookdivasreads.com/2016/12/2016-book-453-inherit-bones-by-emily.ht.... ( )