It’s been a while since I read any of Irene Hannon’s romantic suspense novels. They were what first got me hooked on her as an author, but I found they started to get a bit of a “samey” feel and stopped reading them. Instead, I started reading more of her excellent women’s fiction/romances.

But Labyrinth of Lies looked interesting, so I requested a review copy. The idea of a woman in her thirties going undercover as a high school student in an exclusive boarding school appealed to me (you can thank Johnny Depp and 21 Jump Street, and Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed). I was doubly hooked when I realised her lost love was also undercover in the same school, but working a different case for a different agency.

I very much enjoyed the interactions between Cate and Zeke.

What I enjoyed less was the additional characters: the school counsellor, the janitor, and the security guard, and the evildoer themselves (who I won’t identify because #spoilers but I did roll my eyes at the big reveal). I guess the point of having Will and Eduardo as major characters was to show how one “minor” bad decision can lead to a whole lot of trouble. But I just found it distracted from the Zane plot because knowing what the evildoers thought and were planning destroyed much of the tension.

It also puzzled me that the students smoked (it seems very last century—I’m told students in New Zealand have switched to vaping because it’s cheaper and tastes better), the students didn’t wear school uniform, even in a posh boarding school (and didn’t even seem to have a dress code—or is that normal for all American schools?), and the school didn’t provide housing for staff. They made a point of saying the school was in a fairly remote setting (although still within easy driving distance of a larger town).

Yes, the Christian message was excellent, but I thought the message was delivered at the expense of the plot and the development of the main characters.

Thanks to Revell and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

About Irene Hannon