The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert

Brenda’s review

The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert is the second book in the Shana Merchant series. I loved the first book, Death in The Family, which left me with some lingering questions surrounding Shana’s past and tormentor, who held her captive.

The Dead Season picks up three weeks after the events from Death in the Family. Shana is suspended from duty and is in therapy for PTSD. She is now drawn into two crimes that she has a personal connection to and is forced to play a cat and mouse game with her tormentor.

The Dead Season combines a small-town mystery with an upstate New York kidnapping of a child and a family drama. What’s a small-town mystery without some family secrets and drama involved. The family drama to this one is shocking and not what I expected, and the tension in the story rises, the more we get to know about Shana’s family secrets. While the kidnapping of a child is always disturbing Tessa Wegert keeps it lighter and focuses on Shana and her abductor Bram and those lingering questions I had are answered.

The pacing is slow at first as Tessa Wegert sets up the mysteries for us and then the action picks ups and I was turning the pages as fast as I could. While this one is not a thrilling and chilling dark read it’s a suspenseful and tension-filled satisfying read and Tessa Wegert sure knows how to set us up for the next one and I look forward to reading it.

I received a copy from the publisher through NG