Blood Ties [J.D. Nixon]
I wasn't too sure about this book at first, but I was quickly drawn into the world of Tess Fuller and her home town that the locals call Little Town.
There are really two story lines in this book - Tess's police work and the drama between her and most of the Bycraft family. Tess tends to allow the Bycrafts to do anything they like, not becasue she doesn't care but because she knows how Little Town works - the Bycrafts own the town even if most of the town hates them.
Tess's boyfriend, Jake, is a Bycraft and seems to be the only good one in the lot of them. His only real problem is that he refuses to see how cruel some of his family is. Tess and him get into several disagreements in this book about it.
Finn Maguire is the new sargent in town. They get off to a bad start, but he's okay for the first half of the book and then he starts going hot and cold on her. She tries to tell him things, things that she knows having lived in this town most of her life and he shuts her down. I hated him a little for that. Tess gets beaten up because he didn't listen to her, but I'm not sure she should be willing to trust him after that. I think he's learned his lesson, but I'll have to read the next book to see for sure!
(And I do want to read the next book, Blood Sport, but it might be a while.)
