Don’t Blink: 12 Inspirational Suspense Thrillers, by Terry Toler, Cynthia Hickey, Heather Day Gilbert, Jordyn Redwood, Urcelia Teixeira, Melanie D. Snitker, Camy Tang, Sherri Wilson Johnson, Vikki Kestell, C.D. Gill, Jan Thompson, and Lynn Shannon. (Winged Publications, 2025)
This collection is well worth picking up. Some of the authors were new to me, some were the draw for me to order the book. (Then I scored an advance review copy. My own copy landed in my Kobo app on release day.)
As with any collection, not every story worked for me. The ones that weren’t to my taste will be another reader’s favourites.
Here are some of the ones I most enjoyed, in order of appearance:
Queen Bee, by Heather Day Gilbert: 5 stars, tense but heartwarming. I liked the setting and the bee details. I was pretty I’d identified the villain, but there was a lot more going on that totally surprised me.
Abandoned to Darkness, by Jordyn Redwood: 5 stars, even tenser but somehow Isla’s blindness and having to trust Asher, her rescuer, helped me keep enough distance that I wasn’t too frightened.
Murder by Accident, by Vikki Kestell: 5 stars, and my personal favourite in this collection. Miss BD Finch is delightful—feisty, direct, and determined to avoid the gangster who wants to prevent her testifying at his trial. Be warned, this novella doesn’t resolve that. It stops at what I’d call a pause point, not a cliff-hanger, but where the next stage of the action will begin in book 1 of The Tahoe Mysteries series, Number 1 With a Bullet. Ordinarily, that’s a deal-breaker for me not to find at least partial resolution… but I’d already decided I’ll be following Miss Finch and her pets into the next book.
For more about the authors and to check out their other books: Terry Toler, Cynthia Hickey, Heather Day Gilbert, Jordyn Redwood, Urcelia Teixeira, Melanie D. Snitker, Camy Tang, Sherri Wilson Johnson, Vikki Kestell, C.D. Gill, Jan Thompson, and Lynn Shannon.
[Advance review copy provided by the authors / Review copy from my personal library.]
