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Book Title: Fool Her Once (A Novel) by Joanna Elm
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 416 pages
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: CamCat Books
Release date: Feb, 2023
Content Rating: PG-13 + M. There’s adultery, language, some sexual content, and violent crime, but no explicit descriptions of the crimes.
MY REVIEW
I love the great cover for Fool Her Once and it fits the story. The dark and eerie cover fits the description of the characters inside. It seems they all have secrets they want kept.
Jenna Sinclair’s life is a convoluted mess. Jenna bounces between two men. She does have a knack for tracking people down and now that her past seems to be knocking at her door, she will have to find the answers for herself.
When Ryan is attacked outside her building, she believes that Denny Dennison’s son has come to make her pay for outing him and ruining his life. But, Jenna and Ryan had recently done an expose on restaurants, so the list of suspects is long. I do believe Joanna Elm threw a red herring my way, diverting me from a line of questioning that may have revealed the true villain before she gave me the answer.
She had outed a serial killer’s son, and now she thinks he has come back for revenge. Can killer genes be inherited, making someone evil? Can the children of serial killers become serial killers themselves? Bad genes, bad seeds?
She is married to Zack and has a daughter by him. Dollie sides with her father, but with an absentee mother, always at work in the city, that makes sense.
My thoughts were right and wrong at the same time. How wonderful for the story. What a great twist. I know the truth, but Jenna does not and does her own research, leaving no stone unturned. As the truth unfolds, I can’t help but smile. I love when I don’t have all the answers for myself and need some assistance from the author.
As I am nearing the end, my feelings for Jenna change. I am thinking she is an idiot. I can’t explain more, but I felt I gave her too much credit, believing she was clever, would find the answers and make the right choice.
Then, Jenna and Joanna Elm redeemed themselves in a big way. I guess we humans see what we want to see, trying to make the best of a bad situation. I wonder what you would think?
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Fool Her Once by Joanna Elm.
Some killers are born. Others are made.
As a rookie tabloid reporter, Jenna Sinclair made a tragic mistake when she outed Denny Dennison, the illegitimate son of an executed serial killer. So she hid behind her marriage and motherhood. Now, decades later, betrayed by her husband and resented by her teenage daughter, Jenna decides to resurrect her career—and returns to the city she loves.
When her former lover is brutally assaulted outside Jenna’s NYC apartment building, Jenna suspects that Denny has inherited his father’s psychopath gene and is out for revenge. She knows she must track him down before he can harm his next target, her daughter.
Meanwhile, her estranged husband, Zack, fears that her investigative reporting skills will unearth his own devastating secret he’d kept buried in the past.
From New York City to the remote North Fork of Long Island and the murky waters surrounding it, Jenna rushes to uncover the terrible truth about a psychopath and realizes her own investigation may save or destroy her family.
Joanna Elm is an author, journalist, blogger, and attorney. Before the publication of her first two suspense novels (Scandal, Tor/Forge 1996); (Delusion, Tor/Forge/1997), she was an investigative journalist on the London Evening News on Fleet Street in the U.K. She also wrote for British magazines like Woman’s Own.
Then, she moved to New York where she worked as a writer/producer for television news and tabloid TV programs like “A Current Affair.” She was also the researcher/writer for WNEW-TV’s Emmy-award-winning documentary “Irish Eyes.” In 1980, she joined the Star as a reporter, eventually becoming the magazine’s news editor and managing editor before moving to Philadelphia as editor of the news/features section of TV Guide.
After completing her first two novels while living in South Florida, (Nelson DeMille described Scandal as “fresh, original and unpredictable”) Joanna returned to New York, enrolled in law school, graduated summa cum laude, passed the NY Bar exam, and worked as a principal law clerk for an appellate division justice in the prestigious First Department. She has been married to her husband Joe for 35 years and has one son.
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I liked this one too, Sherry.