When All the Girls Have Gone

When All the Girls Have Gone - Jayne Ann Krentz
Berkley 
Release Date: November 29, 2016

Rating (out of 5):
📚📚📚📚📚

Warning: Possible spoilers ahead!

Synopsis: When Charlotte Sawyer is unable to contact her stepsister, Jocelyn, to tell her that one of her closest friends was found dead, she discovers that Jocelyn has vanished.  
 
Beautiful, brilliant—and reckless—Jocelyn has gone off the grid before, but never like this. In a desperate effort to find her, Charlotte joins forces with Max Cutler, a struggling PI who recently moved to Seattle after his previous career as a criminal profiler went down in flames—literally. Burned out, divorced and almost broke, Max needs the job.   
 
After surviving a near-fatal attack, Charlotte and Max turn to Jocelyn’s closest friends, women in a Seattle-based online investment club, for answers. But what they find is chilling...
 
When her uneasy alliance with Max turns into a full-blown affair, Charlotte has no choice but to trust him with her life. For the shadows of Jocelyn’s past are threatening to consume her—and anyone else who gets in their way...

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The newest Jayne Ann Krentz book When All the Girls Have Gone continues in the romantic suspense style of Secret Sisters: edgy, thrilling, and fascinating.  The theme of family echoes throughout the book- the family you're born to, the family you make, and what you are willing to do to protect those families.  For Charlotte Sawyer, family has always been her stepsister Jocelyn.  When Jocelyn disappears and her best friend winds up dead under questionable circumstances, Charlotte teams up with PI Max Cutler to find answers.  Max begins to piece together a pattern that began when Jocelyn was assaulted in college and reaches to her closest friends today.  Charlotte discovers that Jocelyn is keeping a lot of secrets and some of them are proving fatal.

When All the Girls Have Gone is fast-paced and full of twists and turns, surprises and secrets.  Max and Charlotte are well matched and while they describe themselves as "one foot in front of the other" types, neither is the boring, plodding type they think they are.  Burned in the past, they may be cautious, but the connection and chemistry are there from the start and only get stronger as they get to know each other.  Both are the type of person you feel you know, can relate to, see yourself as, or wish you were. And it was very satisfying at the end when Max comes to the rescue only to find that Charlotte hasn't waited around for him, but saved herself.  By the end, it seems clear that her optimistic approach to life (seen as naive and weak by everyone else) has also saved Max. 

Once again, Krentz successfully weaves together suspense, mystery, romance and humor; connects the past and the present; and a couple of strong lead characters into an excellent book that will keep you guessing until the end.  Who is betraying who? Who is protecting who? It all comes to a happily successful conclusion with no loose threads while at the same time leaving open the chance that we might get the visit at least some of these people again in future books (Max does have 2 brothers we haven't gotten to meet yet . . .). 

Jayne Ann Krentz fans will cheer this newest addition to their collection and newcomers will become instant addicts.  A captivating and clever new book for romantic suspense fans!