When All The Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz

I took while to pick up Jayne Ann Krentz’s When All The Girls Have Gone, which is totally unlike me as I usually have them pre-ordered the second they become available.  When I ran into it at the bookstore a couple weeks ago, whilst picking up an Amanda Quick novel (I’m going through a regency phase again) I decided it was high time to devour it.  And so I did.

It took about four hours, with a few breaks for deep breathing, but I managed to finish it with minimal nervous sweating.  I’m one of those people who watches a movie and then gets so panicked half way through that I look up the ending.  That’s just how I roll and it endlessly annoys my husband.

Anyways, When All The Girls Have Gone is like any other Jayne Ann Krentz novel.  It’s amazing.  Sure, they all follow somewhat the same structure as far as mysteries go, but somehow I’m never able to guess who the criminal is.  Just when I think I’m narrowing in on the killer boom there’s a twist and it turns out to be someone I never expected.  Then even when you know for certain who it is she still manages to throw some surprises in.

Charlotte Sawyer is your typical every day woman.  She goes to work, she goes home, she gets left by her fiancé days before her wedding.  The usual.  Everyone thinks Charlotte is predictable, even boring.  And sure, compared to her spontaneous, exciting, beautiful sister, she probably is.  But when Jocelyn’s friend dies of suspicious circumstances, and Jocelyn vanishes, Charlotte combines forces with private investigator Max Cutler to figure out just what is going on inside that secretive women’s investment club Jocelyn’s a part of.  Together they work their way through a complicated mystery, filled with twists and turns and misdirection.  And if they find each other attractive, that’s perfectly natural.  But as their journey continues they find it harder and harder to ignore the romance building between them.

I mean, how can you not love how that sounds?  Charlotte isn’t the brave, out-going, typically strong woman that Jayne Ann Krentz usually writes about.  She’s just a normal woman thrust into a situation she has no idea how to handle...at first.  As the book goes on Charlotte starts to learn how to stand up for herself, how to be strong, and best of all, how to be comfortable in her own skin.

It’s not my favorite Jayne Ann Krentz novel.  Maybe not even my top 5 (I’m pretty loyal to the first 5 I ever read), but it was a delightful read and I’ll absolutely read it again.