About The Book
There’s only one thing more deadly than the storm…
Fisheries officer Simone Lord is transferred to Quebec’s remote Magdalen Islands for the winter, and at the last minute ordered to go aboard a trawler braving a winter storm for the traditional grey seal hunt, while all of the other boats shelter onshore.
Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès is on a cross-country boat trip down the St Lawrence River, accompanied by Nadine Lauzon, a forensic psychologist working on the case of a savagely beaten teenager with Moralès’ old team in Montreal.
When it becomes clear that Simone is in grave danger aboard the trawler, the two cases converge, with startling, terrifying consequences for everyone involved…
The award-winning author of The Coral Bride returns with an atmospheric, race-against-the-clock thriller set on the icy seas in the midst of a brutal seal hunt, where nothing is as it seems and absolutely no one can be trusted.
My Review
With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. I had read the first book in this series but to my regret not the second. However, it didn’t take me long to catch up with Moralès and get to know and appreciate Simone Lord, the fisheries officer who he was hesitant to acknowledge his feelings for. Their relationship has made me determined to read the second book The Coral Bride.
The storyline concerns both of them and switches back and forth between them throughout the entire novel. Much of Moralès storyline covered his angst about his divorce, his inability to admit his feelings for Simone, his brilliant friendship with Lefebvre and eventually his determination to rescue Simone from the fishing trawler.
Simone’s is much more intense. She isn’t a character I warmed to instantly, just like Moralès she was unable to admit how she felt, and it was only in the latter stages of the novel that she could. But I appreciated almost instantly her determination to stand up to the men she was on the trawler with.
I found her to be brave in many ways, her job, the danger it brought and also her acceptance of the seal cull. After seeing various reviews of this part of the book I wasn’t relishing reading it but even though it was at times brutal it was also handled with sensitivity and showed that some of the men at least showed that they didn’t want the animals to suffer. There was a brief time that showed they cared more about the animals than the activists did, something I had never thought about before.
There was nothing that would have got me onto the trawler, the group of men were only a small one but they were either terrifying or infuriating. I had no idea what any of them would do next and who out of all of them were the biggest threat to Simone.
This was a fascinating novel, descriptive, emotional and dangerous and one that I will definitely read again.
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