Paradox Valley by Gerri Hill

Paradox Valley
by Gerri Hill
Pages: 322
Date: August 22 2016
Publisher: Bella Books
Series: None

Review
Rating: 3.5 to 3.7
Read: September 1 2016

I'd probably rate this one somewhere around 3.5 to 3.7.

Tense. Violent. Bloody.

Something longer than this might appear in this box tomorrow.

--
This one had a lot more point of view shifts than I expected. I think the opening bunch of chapters had a new POV with each chapter. If I hadn't read the book description, I'd have been lost as to which character I was 'supposed' to be caring about (answer: all of them. But mostly Dana and Corey).

Fleeing a shocking and unexpected marriage proposal from her girlfriend of six months, 30+ year old Dana Ingram drops in on her parents and their farm in a sparsely populated area of Colorado. Tried to work the ‘works in marketing in Seattle’ in there somewhere, but couldn’t fit those words in. Her visit home pulls in her mother and a bunch of relatives; most of whom are of little importance throughout the book, though one is in it throughout (and one of the few semi-important people without their own POV – Butch, Dana’s cousin).

Meanwhile Hal and Jean, two 70+ year old people are living on their own tiny farm. Mentioned because both have POV’s that are of some importance in the story. They are, somewhat shockingly, not really, in a lesbian fiction novel, a happily married content straight couple (a thought I had more because we were still in the round robin game of musical head hoping – which one will the reader stop in last/or which of these heads being hopped in are actually important).

Turning back to Butch, he’s a local boy who never left when he reached adult age. Which I mention because he’s dating another local – a girl named Holly. The beginning kind of makes it seem she, her family, and Butch will be very important to the story-line, but only Butch is of any real importance. Though Holly, Annie Gail, and her husband Dick do have their moments on the page (I do not believe anyone actually ever calls the husband Dick by the way, I’m being self-funny).

Colonel Sutt… um. Sutter or Sutton? Dang. I can’t remember now and my Kindle is currently dead. Well, Col. S. is ‘the man in charge’ when suspicious events occur late one night and therefore has his own thoughts expressed for the reader to see. His thoughts are mainly of a raging kind.

One of Colonel S’s subordinates is a woman by the name of Corey Conaway – Captain in the . . . whichever military force she is a Captain in. Probably Army. Certainly not Air Force or Navy, or Coast Guard. Whatever. Captain Conaway, though, has been on an extended ‘special assignment’ for the past 4 or so months, which started right after her entire team was killed on a mission in Afghanistan. The special assignment consists of rolling around her cabin slowly losing weight and drowning in waves of guilt – for still being alive – also drowning in alcohol. Well, at least in the sense that she needs it to sleep.

A couple of other people are also of importance, like say Lucky the dog – super important, but I’m tired of naming people and dogs so I’ll move on.

Shortly after Dana arrived back at her parents place, they enjoy a family reunion type of BBQ. Then the scene shifts to Holly and Annie Gail’s grocery story in Paradox, the small local town. Not exactly sure why they 1) have so much ‘page time’, nor why 2) ‘stuff’ begins from their point of view. Stuff being – Holly’s whimpering about being stuck in tiny Paradox and thinks it’s finally time to move out of this tiny tiny place. She says this to her mother. As they shelf stuff. Or do inventory. Or whatever it was they were doing. The important thing is that both are near heavy cans and things in glass jars. Because – the ground is shaking! Cans are shaking! Cans and glass might shake, fall off, and brain them! Then the power goes off.

Back to Dana – ground shakes. Power goes out. Dana freaks out like she’s never in her life been involved in an earthquake like event.

Hal and Jean experience the earthquake. Stumble around trying various flashlights. Find all of them have dead batteries. Light some candles.

Dana and extended family rush around and notice their phones are dead, the cars are dead. Everything is dead! (battery powered everything). Dana continues to freak out.

Sometime later a bunch of super old dudes ride up to Hal and Jean’s house. Note that they are going to investigate the helicopter that they heard fly near and then heard crash. Hal goes along with them because . . . he didn’t’ want to look bad. Macho stuff. So the group of 70+ people bounce around on horses towards the crash site.

Dana’s freaking out.

Col. S is freaking out because his career is in trouble – since he is the one who sent the helicopter that crashed. He is getting chewed out by his boss, General Ben. I might have the General’s name wrong. No matter. The General calls in a specialist – an out of shape, PTSD suffering, probably doesn’t have the energy to crawl out of bed Captain. By the name of Conaway (they have a family connection – or I mean, the General knew Conaway’s father, and was there for her when the father died).

So – a troop is being sent in on foot to investigate the ‘meteor’ and the crash site of the helicopter. At the same time, Captain Conaway is also being sent in. By herself. In civilian clothing. With a cover story. Because. Reasons.

The first humans Conaway walks into (yes, battery powered things don’t work but you’d think they would at least give her a bicycle, or a horse/camel/donkey/ostrich, but no – foot power only) are Butch and Dana who are out investigating. Both are wary and kind of act like they’ve never meet any other human walking or riding horses before. Eventually they offer to let Conaway ride behind Dana on a really huge horse.

Butch, Dana, and Conaway ride around on horsies. Investigating stuff.

Hal and his gang of aged farmers are also bouncing around investigating.

Eventually weird stuff starts happening. Like giant arms and doorways and soulless eyes. But I do not wish to be too specific because . . . spoiler reasons.

Book had a certain spooky tenseness to it. Plus romance. And panic. And a friendly dog. To a certain extent there were a bunch of conversations that occurred that I kind of just skimmed because they were taking away from the tension. That’s to be noted – some of the tension gets deflated along the way by things like budding romance, conversations about stuff. Truth be told – I’m not sure why there needed to be so many different POV’s. But there were. So.

Right. So. Decided to give Hill another chance after the few other books I’d read. As I noted, I’d give this one a rating around 3.5 to 3.7.

September 2 2016