Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Truth and Consequences 
SERIES: The Sixth Sense #3
AUTHOR: Sarah Madison
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 240 pages
BLURB:
When FBI agent Jerry Lee Parker wakes from a coma after a murderous attack on his life, he has no memory of his immediate past. In the blink of an eye, he has gone from having a nearly photographic memory to recalling nothing of the last six months of his life, including his partner and lover, John Flynn. While Lee tries to reboot his past and reconnect with John, there are events at play around him he doesn’t understand. John is keeping secrets from him, secrets that could get them both killed.
Matters come to a head when Lee is hounded to turn over a mysterious artifact, of which he has no knowledge. The two men wind up in a fight for their lives as they risk everything to keep the powerful relic out of the hands of a ruthless killer. In order to protect those he loves, however, John may be forced to make a deal with the devil.
REVIEW:
I’ve been “friends” with Sarah Madison on Facebook for some time, and I’ve been wanting to read one of her books. I saw Truth and Consequences on our list for review and decided it was time to give her a try. Since this is the third in a series, I grabbed the first and second books so I would be all up to date.
This review WILL contain spoilers for the first two books. There is no way I can talk about the plot of this book without mentioning things that occurred in the other books…
This series follows Jerry Lee Parker and John Flynn, both FBI agents, partners at work and partners at home. The first book has them in San Fransisco, John is called in to assist on a serial killer case, partnering up with Jerry. They end up getting sidetracked by another murder, which turns out to be unrelated to the serial killer, but ends up with them finding an artifact in a museum that leaves John with telepathy. Yup, you read that right. Telepathy. Apparently I didn’t read the blurb closely enough, I totally missed there was going to be any paranormal aspect to these books. I was reading along, thinking it was a book about law enforcement officers, solving crimes and falling in love. Then BAM!!! John has telepathy. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The two eventually hook up, and begin a relationship. I wouldn’t call it love at that point though.
The second book has the two traveling to Washington DC in hopes of tracking down a similar artifact, hoping to find a solution to John’s issue. They end up sidetracked as well, getting involved in a hunt for the killer of John’s sister from twenty years ago, and a weird thing with one of John’s friends from high school. They do find another artifact that causes…. damn, probably shouldn’t say. But it really didn’t work for me at all. So the book ends with Jerry getting hit on the head, no progress on the serial killer storyline, a solution to the death of John’s sister, possession of one of the artifacts but no clue as to what they are.
Whew. This book starts with Jerry in the hospital waking up with amnesia. This is rough for him, he’s got an amazing memory, photographic isn’t the right word, but I can’t come up with what you call it at the moment. Yes, I think that’s funny too, I can’t remember the word to describe the guys amazing memory! Anyway. Jerry has no memory of John, very little memory of things before John, and decides that Jerry is a stupid name and he wants to be called Lee. He’s released from the hospital, goes home with John who he doesn’t know or trust, but John takes him to his mother’s house to recover. He does gain bits of his memory as the story progresses.
This book focuses more on the hunt for the mysterious artifacts, Jerry doing some research online that leads him to a name and history for the funky little boxes. We finally get a look at the bad guy who has been hunting for the boxes, and a little action takes place between the good guys and the bad guys.
Lots of time is spent developing the characters and the relationship between John and Lee. There is a touch of very mild BDSM, more dominance and submission, a little bondage, and a spanking. We get more about Lee’s family issues, and a bit about John’s issues, and get to know Jean, John’s mom very well.
My big issue with all three of these books is that I can’t decide if they are paranormal or not. I wish there was either more to the paranormal storyline, or less. I thought I was getting stories about FBI agents solving crimes and falling in love. I was ok with the addition of the telepathy if it was going to be used to hunt down the serial killer that was introduced in the first book. But nothing has happened with the serial killer storyline at all. It was more used as a way to get the two main characters together in the first book, then it went off on the tangent of the telepathy, the boxes, the murder, and Jerry’s kidnapping. The second book started to focus on the hunt for the boxes, but got distracted by the old murder of John’s sister, some drama with high school friends of John’s and the weird thing I don’t want to mention that didn’t work for me at all. This book was all about the boxes, and finally at the very end, we find out the two are heading back to SF to get back to the serial killer. I liked the action surrounding the mysterious artifacts. I feel this book had more focus than the other two, I liked that there was no job, or crime for them to be solving, it was all about the box. This plot worked better for me than the last two.
I wish we could see part of this from John’s perspective. He goes and does “work” things now and then in this book, and stuff happens that we don’t know about. They spend a fair amount of time apart, and we don’t ever see or hear what John is doing or thinking.
So I liked the storyline of this book better than the others, even though it had the very soap opera amnesia plot. I actually like Lee (or Jerry, not really sure who he is now) and John quite a bit. I like the tension between them, with Lee being out and confident, John not so much. I liked the introduction of Jean, and her bonding with Lee. The sex between them is so good, the tension and anger at times making for some explosive sex scenes.
The writing definitely improved over the three books, it looks like the first one came out four years or so ago, and the author has been working on her style. I would recommend this series, just know that they are a little undefined in their storylines, and this third one is by far the best of the three. I did enjoy my weekend reading though!
RATING:
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