Title: A Merciful Truth
Author: Kendra Elliot
Narrator: Teri Schnaubelt
Series: #2 in the Mercy Kilpatrick series
Genre: Mystery, Romantic Suspense
Publisher: Audible Audio (June 6 ,2017)
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Rating: ☕☕☕☕
Synopsis: Raised by a family of survivalists, FBI agent Mercy Kilpatrick can take on any challenge—even the hostile reception to her homecoming. But she’s not the only one causing chaos in the rural community of Eagle’s Nest, Oregon. At first believed to be teenage pranks, a series of fires takes a deadly turn with the murder of two sheriff’s deputies. Now, along with Police Chief Truman Daly,
Mercy is on the hunt for an arsonist turned killer.
Still shunned by her family and members of the community, Mercy must keep her ear close to the ground to pick up any leads. And it’s not long before she hears rumors of the area’s growing antigovernment militia movement. If the arsonist is among their ranks, Mercy is determined to smoke the culprit out. But when her investigation uncovers a shocking secret, will this hunt for a madman turn into her own trial by fire?
My Thoughts: While I think the first book was a little better I'm enjoying reading about Mercy Kilpatrick and think Kendra Elliot is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine.
The Good, the Bad, and Everything in Between: So, I liked this book a lot but the plot didn't work as well for me as the one in the first book. In this book we not only have preppers, who were the subject of the first book, but we also have militia members. In my head the mindset of the preppers in the first book were a similar to the militia in the second book. There are fundamental differences between the two and the author did a good job of covering them but even from the beginning of book one I thought the preppers were a bit cultish and some of them were even extreme which reminded me of militia. A while back I read Die Trying by Lee Child which was a great book featuring a militia. The reason I bring this up is because that book outlined a leader far superior to the leader of the militia in Elliot's book. He was recruiting but there was no focus on training the recruits. This group would have been doomed from the beginning because the leader wasn't as strong of a leader as the one Lee Child developed. This, of course, is just my opinion and if you've read both books I'd love to hear from you.
In addition I found the identity of the militia leader a bit of a stretch as no one recognized him, not even his own family. There are arguments to be made on why his own family might not have recognized him and I agree there are some possibilities on the lack of identifying, primarily he hadn't seen his family since 1980-ish. I get it, but with the combination of his identity and his questionable leadership, just the idea of him pulling off what he did made this book not quite as good for me as the first.
The progress of Mercy and Truman's relationship is still slowly growing. While I think this is a good thing because I really hate insta-love, it feels as if Truman is a lot more invested in their relationship than Mercy. She continues to hold back, refusing to give everything she can to Truman to support their relationship. Although this drives me nuts it does show Mercy's vulnerability. Her long estrangement from her family and the difficult interactions between them when she finally came home put her in a delicate emotional state. She longs for her family connections but her loner existence for so much of her life made her reliant on only herself. Trust comes slowly for her and this is where the relationship between her and Truman flounder a bit.
Once again I listened to the audio version of this book through my Kindle Unlimited subscription. Teri Schnaubelt continues to narrate and as I mentioned in my review of A Merciful Death she does an Ok job. Not wonderful but not terrible. I find these books easy enough to listen to so I'm going to continue the series on audio but will no longer mention my thoughts on the audio itself going forward.
In a Nutshell: While many of my points seem negative the actual tension and suspense of this book was top notch and Elliot's writing is really engaging and I'd encourage someone who likes Rom/Susp or even just mysteries (as the romance is not as prominent as the mystery aspect) to pick this series up.
