Sins of the Father (The McIntire County Series Book 3) by Winter Austin – Review by Shea Gilkerson 10/1/23
Sins of the Father by Winter Austin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Back to the Eider police department and the officers and detectives within to protect the community. This addition to the series focuses on newly pinned deputy Jolie Murdock – cousin of Nic and Cassy from the previous books in the series.
When Jolie starts the pursuit of a missing girl after a community event, she instead finds the freshly dead body of the girls father, with local bartender and former marine Xavier Hartmann leaning over him, covered in his blood, with no memory of what happened or how he got there. With his traumatic brain injury that stems from an IED blast while in the service, he realizes he has had another blackout and can’t be sure he didn’t kill this man. When he is taken to the hospital, siblings that no one knew existed show up to throw an extra wrench into things.
While trying to wade through all the evidence, believing Xavier is innocent, Jolie discovers similarities between the missing girl and a cold case from when her father was sheriff. She begins to dig deeper, and along the way discovers many secrets in both her own life as well as Xavier’s.
I love the way the community keeps building as Austin continues this series. While they’re all able to be read as standalones, they’re much more fun to enjoy when you have the basis of the previous books in the series and some background on important characters.
Austin does a wonderful job showing how much our military continues to go through, even after the hell of war. She shows their strength, abilities, loyalties and more. These books are great suspenseful reads that offer danger and intrigue while throwing in enough chemistry amongst characters to offer a different kind of tension. Really looking forward to book 4!
