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Title: Pulled Beneath
Author: Marni Mann
Series: The Bar Harbor Series #1
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
Publication Date: March 18, 2014
Genre: New Adult/Adult Mystery, Contemporary Romance
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Pulled Beneath
The Bar Harbor Series #1
Marni Mann
Booktrope Editions, March 2014
ISBN 978-1-62015-219-5
Trade Paperback
From the publisher—
What happens when you uncover years of secrets and find out everything you thought to be true was a lie?
Drew Stevens finds her world turned upside down when her parents are brutally murdered. Soon after, she learns she inherited a property in Bar Harbor, Maine from recently deceased grandparents who she believed had died when she was a baby.
Drew travels north to settle her grandparents’ estate, but finds more questions than answers as the truth starts unraveling. What she didn’t expect to find was Saint, whose reputation was as tumultuous as his past. But the very thing that drew them together was the same thing that kept them emotionally caged.
With Saint’s scars so deep and Drew’s so fresh, can the pair heal from their painful wounds or will they be pulled beneath the darkness of their pasts?
A cottage on a beautiful ocean coastline, a man with a past and endless questions about how her family fell apart years ago and ended in murder —all the elements are here to entice the reader to walk along with Drew in search of answers and a future. Drew is at a loss after the murders of her parents and finding out that they had kept so much hidden from her, including the grandparents she always believed were dead. Why had they done this?
Drew and Saint, along with lesser characters, are so well-drawn that they felt real, in a sense, almost as though I was sitting on that rocky coast watching the story unfold around me. A large part of their appeal is in their normalcy and the day-to-day concerns that make up their lives in addition to the more critical issues they have to confront. Gianna is the best friend we all need but, even more important a character is Bar Harbor itself. This is a setting I’d love to visit in real life and I found myself absorbed in its beauty and its personality, seeing it, in a way, through Drew’s photographic eye. And then there is Bella, truest friend of all.
Mysteries are often built on secrets and, in Pulled Beneath, the primary secret is a lie. Once told, or not told in the event of a lie by omission, that lie can become increasingly insurmountable. As Drew delves into her parents’ past and Saint deals with his own ghosts, they begin to drift towards each other and to new possibilities.
As a mystery lover, I found Pulled Beneath more than satisfying but I also enjoyed the love story (or stories) which, to me, are so much more meaningful than a surface romance. I’m also inordinately fond of series that make the location central to the tale. The second book, Pulled Within, is another Bar Harbor tale involving different main characters and will be out in September 2014; I’ll be looking out for it.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, May 2014.
About the Author
A New Englander at heart, Marni Mann is now a Floridian inspired by the sandy beaches and hot pink sunsets of Sarasota. She taps mainstream appeal and shakes worldwide taboos, taking her readers on a dark and breathtaking journey. When she’s not nose deep in her laptop, she’s scouring for chocolate, traveling, reading, or walking her four-legged children.
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