In which trek reviews Storm Warning

When I noticed that Linda Hall was coming out with a new series, I was interested. I read her two Fog Point series books, Dark Waterand Black Iceback in 2006 and 2007, respectively, and as I recalled, enjoyed them. Well, I just finished the first installment of the Whisper Lake series, entitled Storm Warningand I have to say that I am not sure if I am going to continue to invest myself in this series.

The book is billed as "love inspired suspense" and "riveting inspirational romance". I'll grant the former but not the latter. In short, I was not at all riveted.

Nori Edwards' story starts out with her attempting to build a new life in a new place eighteen months after the death of her husband. Typical of the genre, she meets a handsome, eligible bachelor with a past. Just as typically, there is a secret in the small Maine town.

Strange things happen and Nori, at first, chalks them up to a kind of post-traumatic stress/grief-induced forgetfulness. Her only other options are to believe that there is a ghost haunting her new home or that she is being stalked for unknown reasons.

The story itself, while derivative, is moderately interesting - or would be if I hadn't been brought up short by the mechanics of the writing. Often, I found myself stopping to rework a sentence or a paragraph as if I were the editor, rather than the end-consumer. Thinking, "If only the author had swapped the order of these two sentences..." is just not conducive to a smooth and enjoyable reading experience.

Then there was that minor issue of figuring out a significant number of the key plot elements early in Chapter Four. That was rather a letdown, too.