Book #43 week #34, Red Leaves by Paullina Simons

One of my favorite love stories of all time is The Bronze Horseman series by Paullina Simons. Seriously I recommend it to everyone. So I figure it is about time I give some of her other works a shot. Luckily I found a copy of Red Leaves I was a bit surprised to have found it though the library system since it is from 1996 I believe. Once again I dove right in without even reading the synopsis and boy was I shocked! This is no love story, well sort of.

It is 1994 and Kristina Kim is a senior at Dartmoth College. She has a longtime boyfriend, Jim Shaw, and their best friends Conni Tobias and Albert Maplethorpe are also a couple. Right away you know something is wrong between Kristina and Jim, and Kristina and Conni but what? Kristina is very secretive. No one seems to know much about her past except that her father died after disowning her and she is estranged from her mother who is sick. Also Kristina is meeting a man named Howard for lunch, turns out she is seeking a divorce!

Later that same day Kristina meets Spencer. He is a detective and is instantly smitten with Kristina and she seems to be excited by him too. Little do we know that Kristina is also sleeping with someone who is not Jim. Between her boyfriend, soon-to-be exhusband, lover and the new guy Spencer something is bound to go wrong. Very wrong in fact, Kristina turns up dead. In uncovering the layers of Kristina's mysterious life we hope to unveil the killer and it is quite the journey!

All in all I liked Red Leaves. I usually like to be able to identify with the female lead in a book or see myself in her shoes and well murder really kills that for me (no pun intended!) but it is okay to stray from the usual once in awhile right? So in hoping for another The Bronze Horseman I did not get what I was looking for but like with other books by other authors it does make me curious of what Paullina Simon's other books are about so I might just have to check them out!