Tangled Lies

By: Connie Mann

Narrated by: Jacquie Floyd

Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Orphaned as a child in Russia, boat captain Sasha Petrov has spent most of her life adrift, anchored by only her loving foster family. So when they beg her to return to the family marina in Safe Harbor, Florida, for Mama Rosa's sixtieth birthday, Sasha complies, hoping to put the past behind her. But Mama Rosa has other plans: she wants her three foster daughters to find Tony, the biological son who disappeared twenty years earlier.

Sasha agrees to try, but that's easier said than done when bad boy Jesse Claybourne shows up, reigniting an old attraction. Back in Safe Harbor on a quest of his own, Jesse gets tangled up in Sasha's search, and soon the two are close to uncovering an old town secret that some will stop at nothing to protect.

When Sasha's dog and Jesse are attacked, they realize the past is hiding something more sinister than they ever imagined. Can they expose the truth without destroying Sasha's family and breaking each other's hearts, or are they sailing against the wind?

©2016 Connie Neumann (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Cute Dog, Strong Women, Thin Plot

Although the writing was excellent and most of the characters were interesting, the plot of Tangled Lies made no sense. Set in Safe Harbor on the Florida gulf coast, the town residents were mostly racist, judgmental and mean-spirited - not a place where any sane or caring person would want to raise a family.

Marina owners Rosa and Sal had a 3 year old son who disappeared 23 years earlier, never to be found. At some point, Rosa and Sal became foster parents to 4 teen girls but never adopted them; no background given on how Russian orphan Sasha ended up in Florida or how the other abandoned girls were placed in their care.

The real problem: Sal, who had been threatened by drug smugglers who were running drugs through his property, knew his son had been taken by criminals yet never reported his suspicions to the State Police, FBI OR DEA. No, Sal continued to live at the marina, with his wife and vulnerable daughters and allowed dangerous drugs to be distributed.

While I appreciated the lack of curse words and explicit sex scenes, I did not get the Christian vibe that other reviewers mentioned. People making stupid, impulsive and immature decisions then praying for God to rescue them is not true spirituality. Using our God-given intelligence to solve problems and help those less fortunate is...

Captivated

I was captivated from the start!! The narration was amazing !!! You could visualize each character. I loved the accents and each character portrayed. Honestly, I found myself not breathing through much of the book Hahaha...

Narrator

The story was pretty good - a little slow in parts. But the narrator, while good in some parts with her inflections, was TERRIBLE with accents. Was the main character American or Russian? The accent would slip and be strong in some dialogs and non existent in others. Her parents, who I suppose to be Italian (?), sounded heavily Russian/Romanian. Her Dad even sounded like Dracula at times. While it didn't technically take away from the story, it was pretty annoying. Italian (even East Coast Italian) doesn't sound Slavic.

4.5 Stars!

An enjoyable romantic suspense/mystery. I was drawn in immediately by the writing, mystery and intriguing characters. The way all of the crazy and seemingly unrelated mysterious events came together was amazing. What I didn't care for was the rhetorical questions Jesse or Sascha asked themselves during inner monologues. Personally, I found it slightly annoying, but it was easily overlooked when viewing the story overall.

Story was long and drawn out

The narrator was very creative although it was hard to tell who was who at times. Story was long and drawn out and farfetched.

Well written and twisted plot

I really enjoyed this book. My o lily complaint was how feminine the main male role sounded. Sometimes I had a hard time picking out who was saying what because there wasn't that much change in the voices between the male and female inflections.

Fantastic story

What a fantastic story. Thrilling until the very end. l couldn't guess it! Also loved the audio performance. Thanks Connie for writing the book and thanks Jacquie for bringing it to live.