Full Disclosure - by Dee Henderson

Ann Silver is a woman full of secrets and intrigue.  It's what makes her good at her job, and allows her to have a very select circle of friends.  When Paul Falcon is introduced to her, he finds that he wants to know those secrets, and is only further intrigued by where their circles overlap.  She drops some information in his lap that leads to very big breaks on a very important case that he has been working for a long time.  The farther he gets into his relationship with Ann, and the further into the case he gets, the more secrets are revealed about her past. In the interest of Full Disclosure, can she trust him with her secrets?  Can he handle them if she does?  Where does the crime trail lead, and how exactly are she and her influential friends involved?

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**
This is a really hard review for me to write.  I really really wanted to like this book.  The entire O'Malley Series has a place on my bookshelf, and this book made me want to re-read them all.  I enjoyed the reference to the O'Malley characters here, but it made me a bit squeamish to read that Ann was the author of the books.  It felt self-promoting, as additional characters were frequently commenting on how good the books were and telling her what a good author she was.  Other than a token appearance, however, most of the previous characters (Ann's "friends" whom she fictionalized) didn't really engage with this story.

As much as I liked the character of Paul Falcon, I found Ann to be a bit tiring.  She was touted as a good listener and a good friend, but this book only gave her the one side of being needy and selfish with her time.  I can't say that I would have wanted more of her story, though, because the book already felt overly long.  The two major crime stories took an eon to intersect, and I was able to guess the main part of the "twist" at the end fairly early on in the story.  Also, the side notes from Ann's day job of investigating difficult murders just served to add uneccessary grief to the book.  If we had just seen Ann's burden and need to leave the job behind, it would have sufficed, instead of knowing exactly how bad the crimes were.

I think I can still give this book 3 stars, based primarily on the characters of Paul, Sam, and Rita.  I would have liked to have seen Paul's storyline with his family play out a bit more, and his dialogue and pursuit of Ann be dialed back a notch.  I would have liked to have seen more interaction with the O'Malleys, at least enough to catch up on where they were "now."  Additionally, even though I liked the main two crime stories, they were just too drawn out to keep me in suspense.  I do love Dee's writing style, I just wish this book had been more concise.

I had high expectations for this book, but feel that it fell a bit short for me.

Find the website for the book HERE.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my early and honest review.