Framed

Jan is an artist in New York moving up in the world, but a run in with a corrupt cop forces her to abandon her life and go into hiding. Shelly needs time away from being an officer after a difficult encounter with a gunman. Vacationing with a relative in a sleepy lakeside town she meets a beautiful gallery owner with a past she clearly wants to keep secret. The two get closer and realize they both need to work through their traumas and they need each other.

I enjoy the plot of this book. It is however one of those situation where I feel that while the concept is good the execution could have been better. The writing was a bit dry and spent far too much time in small, unnecessary details, like driving directions. I did enjoy the path the characters took. Both were flawed with some deep traumas and secrets to overcome. There was a constant tension from both characters about their pasts and where their futures were going. The narrative provides some pretty obvious solutions, particularly in the case of what Shelly would do after her vacation away from the job, though the journey to get to these decisions was interesting to see. The story does also include quite a few references to real tragedies over the last few years that aren’t entirely relevant to the plot, but seem to be there to accentuate the way Shelly deals with her thoughts about her own situation.

I enjoyed Shelly’s character quite a bit. Her conflict about her future was interesting to see, and I like her general place in the story. She acts as a sort of catalyst for change in the lives of several people throughout the book. I wasn’t as much a fan of Jan however. It makes sense in the narrative that she would be extremely paranoid because of her need to hide, but I didn’t care for her constant flashes of anger that very quickly go away didn’t flow very well. They felt awkward and each side of it would happen so suddenly. Her actually story was intriguing though and the amount of danger laced in it was exciting.

This was an interesting drama that had a lot of good parts that could have flowed together just a little bit better. A good support cast that add to the overall story is definitely a major selling point as well as a sweet romance that develops throughout the narrative.

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