Book Review: Blind Trust by Sandra Orchard

by Sandra Ardoin

Kate Adams deals with a secret past that includes a dead father and distrust over the pharmaceutical company he worked for, as well as the police. Detective Tom Parker knows her secret and would like nothing better than to show her she can trust him. But just as she’s coming around, events force him to keep his own secret, which threatens his relationship with Kate.

Blind Trust is Book Two in the Port Aster Secrets series by Sandra Orchard. I missed reading Book One, Deadly Devotion. It’s not essential to read it first, but I’d highly recommend it as there’s a continuing story line that will carry on into the third book.

Unlike many of the series I’ve read, this one revolves around the same hero and heroine. The story starts out at a good pace. Kate is accused of passing counterfeit bills at a grocery store and her wannabe boyfriend, Detective Tom Parker, is called in. She’s soon cleared, but they both learn there’s so much more going on in the town of Port Aster than the distribution of funny money. 

Much of Kate’s initial suspicion rests on the antagonist from the first book (part of the continuing story line), though Tom suspects the family members of Kate’s neighbor.

Kate takes up the cause of her elderly neighbor when the woman’s son takes over her guardianship, Tom is looking for a counterfeiter and trying to keep Kate out of trouble while convincing her to trust him, mysterious plants gain the interest of the wrong people. The ball of danger rolls from there. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, so I’ll just say the fast pace remains until the end of the book. 

While the plot, the romance and the writing style held my interest, and I liked the main characters, I sometimes became lost in the details. There were a number of different story lines to sort out. To be fair to the author, maybe it was due to not reading Deadly Devotion beforehand, or maybe it was a matter of life interruptions—whatever—on occasion, I found myself trying to untangle what was going on. 

So here’s the bottom line: My lesson learned on this one is to make sure I come in at the beginning of a continuing story and not in the middle. Even so, I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up another novel by Sandra Orchard, and Blind Trust has me wanting to read the first book.

What do you think of a continuing series like this one? Do you like the idea or do you prefer a series with different main characters and all story lines wrapped up tight at the end of each book?

Disclosure of Material Connection: This book came to me free from the publisher, Revell, with the hope that I would mention it on this blog. There was no requirement for me to write a positive review and the opinions I have expressed above are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.