Review: Thin Air (Jessica Shaw #1) by Lisa Gray

Print Length: 288 pages

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (June 1, 2019)

From Goodreads.com:  She investigates missing persons—now she is one.

Private investigator Jessica Shaw is used to getting anonymous tips. But after receiving a photo of a three-year-old kidnapped from Los Angeles twenty-five years ago, Jessica is stunned to recognize the little girl as herself.

Eager for answers, Jessica heads to LA’s dark underbelly. When she learns that her biological mother was killed the night she was abducted, Jessica’s determined to solve a case the police have forgotten. Meanwhile, veteran LAPD detective Jason Pryce is in the midst of a gruesome investigation into a murdered college student moonlighting as a prostitute. A chance encounter leads to them crossing paths, but Jessica soon realizes that Pryce is hiding something about her father’s checkered history and her mother’s death.

To solve her mother’s murder and her own disappearance, Jessica must dig into the past and find the secrets buried there. But the air gets thinner as she crawls closer to the truth, and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.

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My Rating: 1 star out of 5

*Sigh* Another interesting premise wasted on shoddy writing. The characters were one dimensional with little to nothing to recommend them or even make the reader care about what happens to them. The main character Jessica is a functioning alcoholic (even though she swears she's not, she can't go a day without drinking - going so far as to even drink wine that "tastes off"). Most of the characters have "secrets" that much is true, but the secrets for the most part are easy to figure out and not worth the time it took to uncover them. 

I was also a bit lost by the way the book would spend two or more chapters in the present in one point-of-view, and then either jump to a different point-of-view or a different point-of-view AND a different time frame altogether. Instead of making for a cohesive and interesting story, it became jumbled to the point that I lost interest fairly early on. Of course that might also have something to do with the fact that it seemed like if you weren't a boring main character you were one of the countless others that the author looked unfavorably upon for one reason or another. 

All things considered, this isn't an author that I will actively seek out in the future, however I may give them another chance down the road. 

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                                          Thin Air is available from Amazon.com