The Kayla Walsh Trilogy by Karen Randau – 3x Book Reviews!

A young woman embarks on a dangerous journey to bring a killer to justice.

Welcome to one of the January 15th stops on the blog tour for The Kayla Walsh Trilogy by Karen Randau with Silver Dagger Book Tours (schedule linked.) Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, more reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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Book One

Nowhere to Hide
Kayla Walsh Book One
by Karen Randau

Published 4 January 2022

Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Page Count: 140
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

A young woman embarks on a dangerous journey to bring a killer to justice.

Kayla is newly-engaged and excited to break the news to her parents during a visit for winter break before her final semester at Princeton. As she enters her family’s living room, a home invader shatters her life forever, ruthlessly killing her parents and putting her in a coma.

Two years later, she still remembers nothing of the attack, just that she kissed her fiancé goodbye before opening her family’s front door. Her fiancé thinks she’s dead and has moved on.

A suspicious house fire convinces Kayla it’s time to dump her witness protection program to embark on a dangerous quest to bring the murderer to justice. She and her best friend Martin follow clues that take them from the mountains of Arizona to Washington, D.C., straight into the killer’s lair. Will Kayla succeed in her quest, or will she and Martin fall victim to the ruthless assassin who stole everything Kayla loved?

Nowhere to Hide is the explosive first book in the Kayla Walsh Mystery Suspense trilogy. This fast-paced read is one you won’t want to put down from beginning to end. If you like the suspense of Willow Rose and the plot twists of Kendra Elliot, you will love Karen Randau’s clever, nail-biting Kayla Walsh series.

Get Nowhere to Hide now to meet Kayla and her gang of quirky characters.

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Excerpt

Kendra McGee wouldn’t have entered her family’s home if she’d paid attention to the sound of a gate closing nearby, or if she hadn’t discounted the shadow that briefly appeared then ducked back into the darkness. She was too focused on her fiancé as he kissed her goodbye in the dim glow of the living room light shining out the window.

“See you tomorrow,” he whispered.

Her heart was so full of love she thought it might burst. Sounds, shadows, and the possibility of danger were the furthest things from her mind. All she saw was Brandon and the romantic glow the inside lights threw onto the dusting of snow coating Dad’s prized flower beds.

She ignored her father’s muffled voice inside the two-story home where she’d grown up.

When the living room light went out, Brandon pulled her into his arms and whispered, “Aww, wasn’t it nice of your parents to give us privacy before we separate for a whole day?” He gave her a passionate kiss that made her tingle all over.

“I’ll miss you.” She skimmed her hand across his cheek.

He cupped her face with his cold hands, gazing into her eyes with his that went from hazel to green to brown, depending upon his mood. They darkened as he leaned down to kiss her again. When he pulled away, he let her shiny black hair cascade through his fingers. “I love you.”

He backed down the steps to the sidewalk and blew her a kiss with both hands. He was so dramatic, part of what she loved about him. She hoped he’d keep that characteristic after they married and opened their medical practice together.

As she watched his taillights disappear around the corner, she touched her lips and closed her eyes to savor the memory of his tingle-producing kiss. With a sigh, she gazed at the Christmas lights up and down the street. They made coming home from Princeton for winter break feel magical.

This was going to be a good visit. Mom and Dad would be so excited when she showed them the ring Brandon had given her.

Dad groaned inside the house. She wondered if he’d cut himself while serving the apple pie, a tasty ritual her parents had devised for the monthly return of their only child. With a smile and a carefree hum on her lips, she turned to the door.

Despite being twenty-two and about to become a med student, she loved everything about coming home. The violet walls of her childhood bedroom. Cooking fancy meals or shopping with Mom. Gardening or some other project with Dad. It was even better when Nana, Dad’s fun-loving Irish mother, joined them for church, camping, or a night on the town. She wished with a twinge of grief that Mom’s Cherokee mother wasn’t too sick to visit anymore.

She dug through her purse for the house key, grumbling to herself when she couldn’t find it. They must have known she was home since they turned out the light. She tried the knob.

Given the paranoia that had plagued her parents through the last few years, it should have alarmed her that the handle turned easily. Instead, a spark of anticipation put another smile on her lips and made her mouth water at the thought of the dessert awaiting her.

When she pushed the door open, the kitchen light threw two strange silhouettes against the wall in the dining…

It took a moment to realize the heap under the table was her father. She dropped her purse, suitcase, and coat and took three steps forward. He reached toward her. “Kendra, no.” His arm flopped down. His voice was so weak it scared her.

“Dad?” She looked around. “Mom?” She started to run to her father, but he rasped, “Kendra, no.”

The curtain on the kitchen door swayed, bringing her attention to a handprint near the knob. Blood? A stranger pushed the door open, and a beam from the kitchen cast an eerie glow on his dark goatee but not the rest of him.

As he took a step forward, the stranger yelled Dad’s name. “Kevin!” He faltered when he looked to the kitchen. “Oh, my God, Inola.” Anguish filled his moan as he said her mother’s name.

“Kendra eef run!” Dad coughed, then a gunshot from the kitchen silenced her father forever.

She turned to run from the goatee man but hesitated when she heard a second gunshot. Glancing back, she saw the man stumble toward Dad while holding his shoulder. Blood oozed between his fingers. With the blast of a third gunshot, the man fell across Dad. She didn’t have time to wonder if he was dead or who he was.

She may have screamed. The only thing she was certain of was that she needed to get out of there and get her cell phone out of her back pocket to call the police.

A man in a ski mask rushed from the kitchen toward her. She tripped over Mom’s slipper, fell onto Dad’s ottoman, and scampered toward the door on her hands and feet. He picked her up by a belt loop and the back of her sweater.

“Sorry, kid, you weren’t the target.” The voice was more of an angry, throaty hiss than an apology. He grunted as he heaved her out the front window pane.

My Review

My Rating: 5 Stars
Consider liking my review on Goodreads

I was granted complimentary access to Nowhere to Hide by Karen Randau as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Siler Dagger Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Kayla’s life was coming up roses until a home invasion ended in the murder of her parents and a year-long coma for her. A year after waking up, now somewhat recovered, Kayla’s life is about to get a whole lot more interesting once again. The home she and her grandmother live in is set on fire, her former physiotherapist shows up out of the woodwork, and suddenly it’s time to run off on a life-or-death adventure figuring out what started off this whole mess and why her parents were targeted to begin with.

This book is short but it has all the action and entertainment of a much longer novel condensed down to its essence and blasted back out at breakneck speed. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it keeps you on your toes! It feels like Mission Impossible or the Jason Bourne books, but our protagonist is a 20-something young woman from this decade, and it rocks.

I devoured this book in an evening and was so excited to jump straight into book two. Thank goodness I signed on to review the whole trilogy!

Book Two

No One to Trust
Kayla Walsh Book Two
by Karen Randau

Publishing 1 February 2022

Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Page Count: 143
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

She thought she could trust him. Until she became his prey.

Devastated when she learns why and how a brutal home invader murdered her parents, Kayla and her best friend Martin follow clues through Paris and into the French countryside — only to end up in the killer’s lair.

After tracking a clue to a mysteriously familiar French rural town, Kayla and Martin fight an attacker who launches Martin from a speeding train. Kayla refuses to believe he’s dead and in her grieving realizes that he’s become much more than a friend to her. But she knows she’ll be the next to die if she gets caught at the train station, so she runs. And she keeps running, at last finding refuge in a homeless community.

Her new friends help her escape, but when she follows yet another clue, she runs straight into the grips of men who have chased her down since she left her home in Arizona.

Can Kayla and Martin survive their misplaced trust, or will they become the next victims? And will their love survive with them?

No One to Trust is the bone-chilling Book 2 in the Kayla Walsh Mystery Suspense series. Buy it now to learn Kayla and Martin’s fate.

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Kayla Walsh had never expected to leave the safety of witness protection to end up in an abandoned Virginia missile silo. But here she was, following her grandmother’s silver-haired boyfriend, Vincent, through a cold and musty underground parking lot.

Her best friend and former physical therapist, Martin, touched her arm. Walking behind Vincent, he leaned down to whisper in Kayla’s ear. “Are you sure about this? I’m getting bad vibes.”

She raked her fingers through her short, black hair and whispered, “You could go back home to Arizona.” She looked up into the dark eyes above Martin’s wide nose. She hoped he wouldn’t abandon her to finish their mission alone.

He swallowed hard and shook his head. “We’re in this together.”

Vincent stopped at an elevator and turned toward his guests with a smile that deepened the dimples in his cheeks. His blue eyes sparkled with pride as he pressed the call button.

Martin stopped beside Vincent under a light that reflected off his shaved head and gave his ebony skin a green tone.

She stared at a logo on the doors that identified Vincent’s operation as a security business.

“I thought my grandmother said you were a rancher.”

“I have several businesses, dear.” Vincent entered the elevator. “My grandson runs the ranch. At my age, this business is easier on my tired muscles and bones.” He stepped into the elevator and waited for them to join him.

She tried to smile while clinging to a handrail during a high-speed descent farther underground. The sleep-deprived fog in her brain took her thoughts in a morbid direction. The tremble in her knees threatened to reveal her discomfort. Hoping to tamp down her growing unease, she bit the side of her mouth and supported herself against the wall.

“I’m looking forward to sleeping on the plane.” She hoped the words would coax her thoughts away from what brought her to this refurbished missile silo. After being chased down a dirt road by two guys who kept yelling things she couldn’t hear, a magnet attached to a helicopter had whisked her car to a metal platform. Her stomach stayed behind when the platform swished down to a parking lot where Vincent met them.

“I could use a nap, too.” A wobble in Martin’s unusually quiet voice worried her.

The elevator door opened to another hallway with concrete walls lit by more sconces. A man in tight jeans and black-framed glasses waited for them outside the elevator. Vincent introduced him as his assistant, Alex, who extended a hand as cold as Kayla’s insides.

She wondered if Alex’s administrative duties bored him as much as hers did when she worked for her grandmother at the Arizona home for abused women and children.

Vincent put a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Kayla told me last night that your attacker at the Lincoln Memorial tried to slice your throat. Our nurse practitioner is waiting to treat the wound. Alex will take you.”

Alex led Martin down another hallway.

Vincent, all six-foot-two of him, turned to Kayla. “Your grandmother wants to talk to you before we leave for Paris. We have a guest room where you can freshen up and make the call.”

He led Kayla into a brighter hallway with windows and doors on both sides. Men and women in casual clothes tapped on computer keyboards or talked on phones. A group of six discussed a strange drawing on a white board—boxes, circles, and triangles connected by lines.

No one looked up as Vincent and Kayla passed.

She stepped around the door he held open and surveyed the room. It contained a twin bed covered with a beige comforter, and a sink against a green wall, with a mirror over it that was flanked by a hand towel on one side, and a hair dryer dangling from a hook on the opposite side. To the left of the sink was a toilet, and a tiny square shower stall took up a corner on the right.

He gestured toward the black phone on the nightstand. “To call your grandmother, dial nine. You’ll hear a buzz, then dial her number. When you’re done, open the door. I’ll be right outside.”

He closed the door, but she imagined his presence behind it.

She sat on the bed, wondering if someone would listen to her call. Her grandmother had told her to trust Vincent, but given everything that had happened in the last two weeks, trust was in short supply.

My Review

My Rating: 4 Stars
Consider liking my review on Goodreads

I was granted eARC access to No One to Trust by Karen Randau as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Siler Dagger Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Betrayed by people they should have been able to trust, Kayla and Martin take their life-or-death quest of discovery to France. Playing tourists in an attempt to dodge stalkers as they seek answers, the pair retraces Kayla’s footsteps from her family’s past vacation to France. You know, the one during which her parents supposedly stole a diamond.

This book picks up right where the last one left off and if you’re in a position to read them back-to-back you’ll find you barely noticed that a new book has started. It’s gets to the point that fast and sweeps you off in a continuation of what was truly a great adventure in the previous book. I loved all of the descriptions and cultural markers around France and the reminders that this is indeed written for modern times (such as reference to the Notre Dame cathedral still being fire damaged and in a state of reconstruction.)

Kayla gets a lot of answers, but all of these answers just lead to more questions, and once again I was eager to pick up the next book immediately! My only complaint is that there’s a friends-to-lovers romance that really caught me off guard and then takes a tragic twist, and I just did not see any of those leading emotions in the characters involved before each plot event hit. The characters do express the moment they fell in love to one another and this feels like a “show don’t tell” feedback moment that perhaps the author should have received from an editor at some point before releasing ARCs. I’ve been loving the writing quality up to this stumbling point and it really stood out as not fitting with everything else I’ve been loving about the books so far.

Overall another great fast-paced mystery that bleeds into the next and demands a binge reading sessions. Read this book!

Book Three

Nothing to Lose
Kayla Walsh Book Three
by Karen Randau

Publishing 1 March 2022

Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Page Count: 142
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

He stalks her wherever she goes, but can she afford not to continue the search?

On the final leg of her journey to deliver justice to the home invader to killed her parents and put her in a coma, Kayla arrives in Australia under duress. She knows who killed her parents and why, and now she fears he’ll get to her, her grandmother, and Martin before she’s able to find the priceless gem he claims her parents stole. But she knows better.

What she finds in Australia cringes her, but will it gives her the evidence she needs to take down her stalker? It provides yet another clue that takes her back to the U.S.

But will she get there in time to save herself, her grandmother, and the man she loves?

To find out, buy this bone-chilling final installment, book 3 in the Kayla Walsh Mystery Suspense trilogy.

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Excerpt

Twenty-four-year-old Kayla Walsh stood on the yawning metal ramp of a cargo plane, awed by the clear blue Indian Ocean and cloudless sky in Broome, Australia. Ignoring the conversation between the pilot and her traveling companion Yves, she breathed in the hot, salty air that blasted her face.

During her previous visit here six years earlier, her late mother had described the first impression of Broome as opening the door of a convection oven and leaning in too far. That was accurate, plus, thinking of her mother put a brief smile on her face.

Unlike her arrival with her parents in a passenger plane on the last leg of that summer vacation, she had just endured two days on two different cargo planes. She and Yves had boarded one in Austria, then got off to change planes in Bangkok, where they had been able to purchase a sandwich and water before boarding the next cargo plane, belonging to the owners of a diamond mine. That had been their only meal along the way, and her stomach was now rumbling.

In contrast to that trip with her parents, this wasn’t a vacation.

Yves and Vincent—the man Kayla was sure had murdered her parents and put her in a year-long coma—believed Mom and Dad had hidden a priceless diamond in Australia. A diamond Vincent claimed her parents stole from the Louvre in Paris, but that should have been his. Kayla refused to believe that her parents, Inola and Kevin McGee, would have done that, especially with their teenaged daughter present.

That vacation seemed like a ridiculously long time ago, when life was carefree. She had been engaged to a fellow med student, and her name was Kendra McGee—before the home invasion that changed her life forever and put her in witness protection. Turned out it wasn’t witness protection at all. It was Vincent deceiving her grandmother so he could control and keep track of them.

Kayla heaved a sigh, ready to head to the diamond mine, retrieve the diamond, and catch the next commercial flight back to the States. Back to Martin, who had been her physical therapist before becoming the best friend who had undertaken this arduous journey across three continents, in search of a diamond Vincent insisted belonged to him. She hoped that finding the diamond would finally bring her back to the normal life she craved.

Martin’s kind, gentle spirit had captured her heart during the past few weeks, and they had confessed their love for each other. Now he was convalescing in a Paris hospital. She’d hated to leave him behind as she completed her task, but his injuries had been too extensive to allow him to travel.

The diamond mine they were headed to used to be owned by the family of Lucas, Yves’s business partner.  The two men claimed to have been friends with Kayla’s parents many years ago and had been entrusted with their safe word.

Despite Yves knowing her childhood safe word, she felt unable to trust him because of the way they had approached her.

They’d used a sedative to force her to leave Martin behind, but it had given her disturbing dreams. At the same time, it had caused her to finally remember the attack that had left her parents dead. Those memories prompted as many questions as they answered.

Then there were the stories Yves had told during the flights to Australia. They had pierced her heart and drained her hope of getting justice for her murdered parents. She had to find the Rose Diamond to save herself, her grandmother, and Martin.

Despite the hot Australia day, she shuddered at the memory of the blast of cold that had ripped through the light fabric of her summer clothes back in Austria. A helicopter had taken her and Yves from a snow-covered mountain top to an Austrian airstrip. When she realized they were about to board the first plane, she had tried to reason with Yves.

“We don’t need to go to Australia,” she had argued. “My family didn’t visit a diamond mine during our vacation there.”

She now understood that last family vacation was what had triggered the destruction of the lives of everyone she loved.

Yves was undeterred by her protests. His voice had sounded as flat and tired as his dark brown eyes looked. “We must go if we ever want our lives back.”

He had placed a hand on her back to nudge her into the cavernous fuselage lined with jump seats. While showing her how to buckle up, he explained that although Lucas’s family no longer owned the diamond mine, they had remained in contact with the new owners.

“It’s where the Rose Diamond originated,” he had said. “Lucas’s grandfather gave it to the Prime Minister of France when he toured the mine in the 1980s. When Lucas heard of Vincent’s plan to steal it, he talked us into helping him.” He shook his head. “What a mistake.”

Now, Yves placed his hand on her back again, this time to nudge her out of the plane and into yet another attempt at shaking loose memories of that fateful vacation. She didn’t believe they’d hidden it in Australia, and she shook off his hand to wrap her arms around herself.

“You’re still afraid of me?” He sounded hurt, and his crinkled-up face showed concern.

My Review

My Rating: 4 Stars
Consider liking my review on Goodreads

I was granted eARC access to Nothing to Lose by Karen Randau as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Siler Dagger Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Kayla’s in Australia now. I’m not entirely sure why but neither is Kayla so I guess we’re both on the same page? Nothing to Lose is a whirlwind of plot twists and reveals wherein the dead aren’t dead (but some still are,) no one is who anybody else thinks they are, everybody has an alias or two, and Kayla’s still trying to prove her parents were innocent.

This was a thrilling, slightly confusing, and most definitely entertaining conclusion to what has been a brilliant adventure, and I’m a little sad to see it all come to an end. I wish I could say I fell in love with new characters but all of the twists and turns destroyed my ability to trust any of them enough for that. Why wasn’t THIS book called No One to Trust?

My one big critique is that while the cultural integrations in the previous book in France worked well, the cultural tidbits in this book in Australia felt a little cliche and forced. Why does everyone know and spout off the exact same handful of facts about crocodiles? Also, please, give the reader some credit. This is book three, they’re short and bingeable, stop spelling out who everyone is and why they’re there when they’re presenting as the alias we already knew. Perhaps someone who reads these books with more spacing won’t notice but I read the trilogy in 2 sittings and that really stood out.

All in all I loved this trilogy, I had a lot of fun reading it, and I really hope plenty of readers will give these books a chance as they become available. They’re worth it!

About the Author

Karen Randau authors fast-paced stories with intricate plots, lots of action, and a dash of romance, all told from the point of view of a female amateur sleuth. The Kayla Walsh Mystery-Suspense Trilogy is her third series featuring strong, independent women. Previous series include the three-book Frankie Shep series featuring a modern-day female rancher in Wyoming, and the Rim Country Mystery series, featuring a woman who loses her husband in a movie theater shooting on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. She lives in the mountains of Arizona with her multi-generational family.

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