Beneath a Midnight Moon: Review, Synopsis & Explain (5 Flaws)

1 day ago

Book Axis

24 minutes

Picture a pitch-black small-town logging road, a mystery stalker tossing bricks through a single mum’s window, and a grumpy billionaire bodyguard who refuses to leave her porch. Beneath a Midnight Moon by Catherine Cowles promises a pulse-pounding romantic suspense packed with high-stakes survival, forced proximity, and fiery banter. Yet beneath the glossy cover lies a heavily recycled blueprint that seasoned readers can spot from a mile away, leaning hard on melodrama whenever the actual mystery runs out of petrol.

While the bedroom chemistry between the leads sizzles nicely, the pacing drags its feet through repetitive inner monologues and an antagonists’ gallery straight out of a daytime soap opera. Before you hand over your hard-earned cash or sacrifice a weekend binge, let’s unpack why this release is equal parts addictive guilty pleasure and frustrating missed opportunity.

Evaluation Metric	Score (Out of 10)	The Brutal Verdict
Plot & Pacing	4.5	Starts with a bang, stalls in the middle with endless domestic scones-baking scenes, and rushes the third-act climax.
Suspense & Logic	3.5	Any true-crime fan will clock the secret villain before Chapter 10; the police work is laughable.
Character Depth	5.5	Nola and Rory are likable enough, though they repeat the exact same insecurities every ten pages.
Spice & Banter	8.0	The genuine saving grace of the book; the tension and payoff do all the heavy lifting.
Originality	4.0	Reads like a Mad Libs template of the author’s previous five small-town series.
Overall Rating	5.1 / 10	Solid for a brain-off Sunday comfort read, rough if you demand basic survival logic.

Outline show

Detailed Summary

Part 1: The Reluctant Return and The Grumpy Neighbour (Chapters 1 – 10)

Chapter 1 opens with Nola Mercer rolling into the sleepy coastal town of Sparrow’s Cove with her six-year-old daughter, Maisie, asleep in the backseat of a clapped-out sedan. She is fleeing an abusive, gambling-addicted ex-partner from the city and is dead broke, forced to move into a rotting cottage left behind by her estranged late aunt. Right away, the narrative lays on the misery with a trowel—her car radiator blows up in the pouring rain, her kid is crying, and the front porch step snaps under her boot. It is a classic Cowles opening designed to make you pity the heroine immediately, though it feels a tad manipulative right out of the gate.

Chapter 2 flips the perspective to Rory “Mac” Mackenzie, a former special forces operative turned high-end security mogul who lives like a hermit in a luxury timber compound next door. Rory watches Nola wrestle with a soggy mattress through his binoculars, immediately grumbling about his peace and quiet being ruined by city amateurs. Instead of offering a normal neighbourly hello, he stomps over in the mud, scowls at her life choices, and repairs her broken step without asking permission. The grumpy-sunshine dynamic is established with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, ticking every box on the BookTok checklist before page twenty.

Chapter 3 sees Nola trying to scrub black mould off her new kitchen benches while Maisie accidentally wanders onto Rory‘s private bushland chasing a stray kelpie. Nola panics and sprints through the scrub, expecting a lunatic with a shotgun, only to find the giant, heavily tattooed Rory awkwardly handing her daughter a digestive biscuit. Nola apologises profusely, her past trauma making her flinch violently when Rory raises his hand to swat amozzie off his hat. Rory clocks the flinch instantly, triggering his alpha-protector instincts—because in this universe, blokes are part bloodhound when it comes to spotting damsels in distress.

Chapter 4 takes us into the main street of Sparrow’s Cove, where Nola begs for a waitress gig at the local diner run by Martha, the town matriarch who knows everyone’s dirty laundry. Here we meet the extended cast of quirky locals and Rory‘s ridiculously handsome brothers, Nash and Hayes, who immediately adopt Nola into their inner circle. While the banter is breezy, it is slightly absurd how an entire town becomes fiercely protective of a total stranger within twelve minutes of ordering a flat white. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure watches Nola from behind a parked ute across the street, dropping our first clumsy breadcrumb of the stalker subplot.

Chapter 5 puts us back inside Rory‘s head as he runs an illegal federal background check on Nola from his multi-screen billionaire tech cave. He uncovers her messy history with her ex, Vance, who owes eye-watering sums to violent city loan sharks. Rather than ringing the local cops like a functional adult, Rory decides it is his personal mission to shadow her twenty-four seven without telling her why. It is framed as swoon-worthy devotion, though in the real world, you would slap an intervention order on the bloke faster than you can blink.

Chapter 6 delivers the first proper vandalism scare when Nola finishes her late shift at the diner to find all four of her car tyres slashed and a dead crow left on her bonnet. She tries to rationalise it as bored local teenagers playing pranks so she doesn’t terrify Maisie. Rory materialises out of the dark alley five seconds later, spots the rubber, and loses his absolute marbles at her refusal to take the threat seriously. They have a heated barney in the carpark where sexual tension and frustration collide, ending with Rory winching her car onto his flatbed truck.

Chapter 7 forces Nola to accept daily lifts to work from Rory, kicking off the forced proximity trope inside the cab of his oversized dual-cab ute. During the school run, Maisie chatters non-stop from the booster seat, slowly melting Rory‘s frozen heart while Nola stares wistfully at his forearm tattoos. The dialogue here is genuinely witty, showing Cowles at her strongest when writing grumpy giants being outsmarted by cheeky six-year-olds. However, the plot momentum grinds to a halt as we get three full pages describing the smell of Rory‘s leather seats and sandalwood soap.

Chapter 8 introduces Deputy Sheriff Brody, Rory‘s best mate on the force, who drops by the cottage to file a half-hearted report about the tyres. Brody pulls Rory aside on the verandah and warns him not to get emotionally compromised after what happened on his last military deployment—a clunky info-dump about Rory‘s dead squadmate that serves as his dark backstory. Nola overhears just enough through the flyscreen to realise Rory is carrying heavy survivor’s guilt. Instead of communicating like grown-ups, they exchange brooding stares across the kitchen island over toasted cheese sandwiches.

Chapter 9 sees Nola working the Friday night rush at the diner when a sketchy bloke in a cheap suit comes in asking pointed questions about the new blonde in town. Nash steps in, puffs out his chest, and intimidates the stranger into leaving, immediately texting Rory the bloke’s rego plates. The protective brother brigade is in full swing, though it reduces Nola to a passive prop in her own storyline. Later that night, Nola hears heavy boots crunching on her gravel driveway, sending her into a full-blown hyperventilating panic attack.

Chapter 10 closes out Part 1 with a literal crash when a paver wrapped in a threatening note is hurled through Nola‘s lounge room window at midnight. Rory breaches her front door within twenty seconds, Glock drawn, sweeping the hallways like he is raiding a compound in Kandahar. He barks at Nola and Maisie to pack an overnight bag because they are moving into his fortress of a house effective immediately. Nola argues for about two paragraphs to look independent before caving completely, setting up the cohabitation arc.

Beneath a Midnight Moon: Review, Synopsis & Explain (5 Flaws)

Part 2: Forced Proximity and Domestic Distractions (Chapters 11 – 20)

Chapter 11 wakes us up inside Rory‘s architectural log mansion, where Nola is stress-baking cinnamon scrolls at five in the morning to pay him back for his hospitality. Rory wanders into the kitchen wearing nothing but low-slung grey trackies—obviously—and they share a charged moment over the marble island involving icing sugar on her cheek. It is peak romance cliché, and while it delivers the butterflies, it completely kills the terrifying adrenaline from the brick attack six hours earlier. One minute there is an armed psycho outside, the next they are flirting over pastry dough.

Chapter 12 focuses on Rory installing military-grade motion sensors around Nola‘s dilapidated cottage while she tags along to grab more winter clothes for Maisie. While prying up a loose floorboard in her wardrobe, Rory discovers a hidden roll of cash and an encrypted thumb drive Nola kept secret. He confronts her on the spot, demanding the whole truth if he is going to keep her breathing. Nola finally cracks and confesses that before fleeing the city, she copied digital ledgers proving Vance‘s crime boss was laundering syndicate money, making her a walking target.

Chapter 13 dives into the fallout of her confession, with Rory furious that she withheld critical intel that puts Maisie directly in the firing line. Nola bursts into tears and explains she is used to nobody believing her because her own parents treated her like an inconvenience. Rory‘s anger instantly evaporates into protective caveman mode, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug that lasts half the chapter. This scene highlights a massive flaw in the book: every major conflict between the leads is resolved way too easily with a cuddle and a growled promise.

Chapter 14 gives us a bizarre tonal detour with the annual Sparrow’s Cove Autumn Fair, which feels ridiculously unsafe for a woman actively hunted by contract killers. Rory acts as her shadow in a flannel shirt while they eat fairy floss and Maisie wins a giant stuffed wombat at the sideshow alley. The townsfolk gossip openly about how Rory hasn’t smiled in five years until Nola rocked up. It is cute domestic filler, sure, but if you are reading for the thriller aspect, you will be rolling your eyes at how recklessly they stroll around an open crowd.

Chapter 15 turns up the heat after the fair when Martha insists on taking Maisie for a sleepover, leaving Nola and Rory completely alone in the compound. A freak coastal storm rolls in, knocking out the town’s power grid because romance novel weather is always on the payroll. Sitting by the roaring fireplace with a bottle of top-shelf scotch, Rory finally opens up about the botched ambush that cost his best mate’s life and left him with night terrors. Nola comforts him, and their first kiss happens on the sheepskin rug—steamy, desperate, and admittedly very well written.

Chapter 16 picks up the morning after their heavy make-out session, where Rory pulls the exhausting “I am too broken for you” emotional retreat. He acts icy over bacon and eggs, convincing himself that getting attached to Nola will get her killed just like his army mate. Nola, instead of calling him out on his emotional whiplash, retreats into her shell and decides to pick up double shifts at the diner so she can rent a flat in town. This manufactured third-act-style drama in the middle of the book feels completely unnatural given how obsessed he was with her twelve hours prior.

Chapter 17 drags the suspense plot back onto the stage when Nola is locking up the diner alone at 10 PM—which makes zero sense given she has a millionaire bodyguard—and the back alley door is jimmied open. She barricades herself inside the walk-in coolroom and rings Rory, whose phone is conveniently sitting on his workbench while he chops firewood in the rain shirtless. Hayes actually intercepts the SOS call and tears down to the diner with Rory arriving two minutes later in a panic. They find the back lane empty except for an engraved zippo lighter belonging to Vance‘s crew, proving the hunters have breached the town limits.

Chapter 18 sees Rory losing his mind with self-hatred for missing her call, leading to an explosive shouting match back at his cabin. Nola rips into him for shutting her out emotionally while trying to micro-manage her life physically. Rory snaps, pinning her against the timber hallway wall (consensually, of course) and admitting he is terrified of how gutted he would be if he lost her. This transitions straight into the first full explicit spicy scene of the book, which takes up the remaining ten pages and leaves zero room for actual detective work.

Chapter 19 is the “morning after bliss” chapter where they stay tangled in the sheets until midday, seemingly forgetting that a hitman knows where she flips pancakes. When they finally put clothes on, Brody arrives with forensic results from the zippo lighter found in the alley. Oddly enough, the partial prints on the metal don’t match Vance, but rather someone local whose juvenile record was sealed decades ago. This is framed as a jaw-dropping twist, though anyone paying attention to the weirdly overly-helpful background characters at the diner already clocked the culprit chapters ago.

Chapter 20 wraps up Part 2 at a Sunday afternoon barbecue at Nash‘s riverfront property, where Nola officially debuts to the whole Mackenzie clan as Rory‘s missus. Stubbies are cracked, snags are burned on the barbie, and Rory is practically purring with domestic contentment. Just as Nola ducks inside the kitchen to grab extra pavlova, her burner phone pings with an unknown text showing a high-res photo of Maisie on the tire swing—snapped from the bushland right across the creek seconds ago. Instead of screaming out the window to the five combat veterans on the deck, she freezes like a deer in headlights.

Part 3: The Unravelling and The Third-Act Chaos (Chapters 21 – 31 & Epilogue)

Chapter 21 kicks off with Nola finally finding her voice after a solid minute of staring at the screen in horror. Rory, Nash, and Brody vault over the back fence like attack dogs, crashing through the ferns to find flattened grass and a warm boot print, but the stalker has vanished into the gorge. The family goes into full tactical lockdown, convoying everyone back to Rory‘s fortified cabin. The pacing finally finds fifth gear here, though you have to laugh at how an out-of-shape city crook managed to out-sprint three elite trackers on their home turf.

Chapter 22 deals with the emotional fallout on Maisie, who realises the “bad men” are nearby and suffers a meltdown at bedtime. Rory sits on the edge of her bunk and tells her a story about a brave little wombat, cementing his status as top-tier stepdad material. Afterward, Nola and Rory drink tea on the darkened deck, and Nola whispers that she feels like a poison bringing violence to his peaceful family. It is word-for-word the exact same conversation they had in Chapters 8, 13, and 16, padded out with slightly different adjectives to hit the word count target.

Chapter 23 shifts into investigation mode as Rory and Brody scrub through highway traffic cameras leading out of Sparrow’s Cove. They spot a dented white tradie van near the creek access road during the barbecue that belongs to Caleb, the quiet local handyman who has been fixing the diner’s leaky roof since Chapter 4. Turns out, Caleb is Vance‘s biological half-brother who changed his surname years ago and has been feeding Vance live updates. It is an astronomically convenient coincidence that Nola fled three hundred miles to the exact tiny postcode where her abusive ex’s secret brother happens to clean gutters.

Chapter 24 follows the local police tactical unit raiding Caleb‘s rural shed on the edge of the forestry reserve, only to find it stripped bare with blueprints of Rory‘s security grid pinned to the wall. Brody realises too late that the shed was bait to drag every cop in the county thirty minutes away from the cabin. Rory tries to radio the house, where Hayes was left guarding Nola and Maisie, only to find the local cell tower jammed by a commercial frequency scrambler. Suddenly, a desperate street gambler has access to black-ops military tech just to manufacture third-act jeopardy.

Chapter 25 drops us into Nola‘s POV at the cabin as black smoke starts billowing under the laundry door—Caleb and Vance have cut the backup generator lines and torched the back deck to flush them out. Hayes charges out the side door to draw their fire and immediately cops a bullet to the collarbone, knocking him unconscious so Nola has to be the hero. Nola shoves Maisie inside the reinforced steel panic room Rory built, punches in the lock code from the outside, and runs out the front door to lure the gunmen away from her kid. Brave? Sure. Brain-dead when she could have simply stepped inside the impenetrable steel bunker with her daughter and waited twenty minutes for Rory? Unforgivably stupid.

Chapter 26 delivers the big showdown as Nola sprints barefoot into the midnight bushland behind the property, leading Vance and Caleb up a slippery granite ridge. She trips over a tree root and gets cornered against a sheer cliff drop under the glowing midnight moon (cue the cinema sins ding, they did the title thing!). Rather than grabbing the thumb drive and shooting her, Vance monologues for five full pages about how she emasculated him and how much debt he is in. Villain monologues are a staple of the genre, yet Vance sounds less like a terrifying mob associate and more like a cartoon villain twirling his moustache.

Chapter 27 brings Rory barrelling through the scrub like an angry rhino, spearing Caleb into a eucalyptus tree while Nola grabs a fallen ironbark branch and belts Vance across the kneecap. A brutal, muddy brawl breaks out between Rory and the two half-brothers on the cliff edge. Just as Vance pulls a concealed flick-knife and lunges at Nola‘s throat, Rory throws his body in the way, taking the blade deep in his lower ribs before knocking Vance off his feet with a right hook. Flashing blue lights finally illuminate the canopy as Brody arrives three minutes after all the heavy lifting is finished.

Chapter 28 takes place in the regional hospital emergency ward where Nola paces the lino floor covered in mud and Rory‘s blood while surgeons patch him up. Hayes is already propped up on a gurney in a sling, scoffing hospital jelly and cracking awful jokes with the nurses, right as rain. The surgeon walks out and tells Nola the knife missed Rory‘s spleen by a fraction of an inch because his oblique muscles were so unusually dense—a piece of medical logic so absurd it will make you snort your coffee out your nose. Nola collapses beside his hospital bed and weeps into his sheets.

Chapter 29 sees Rory waking up high as a kite on morphine and immediately trying to rip his IV out to check if Nola and Maisie are unharmed before declaring his undying love in front of the ward matron. He tells her she didn’t bring darkness into his life; she brought the light that finally chased away his military ghosts. It is sweet if you enjoy heavy melodrama, though the psychological trauma resolution happens like flicking a kettle switch. One knife wound and ten years of debilitating combat PTSD are magically cured by the power of romance.

Chapter 30 jumps forward six weeks: Vance and Caleb are rotting in maximum security, and the federal authorities have paid Nola a massive whistleblower reward for handing over the syndicate’s thumb drive. She uses the cash to buy out the old corner store in Sparrow’s Cove and convert it into an artisan bakery. Rory has turned her rundown cottage into an Airbnb and officially moved his girls into his main compound permanently. We get a lengthy domestic scene of them assembling flat-pack furniture for Maisie‘s room, wrapping up every loose thread in a neat, predictable bow.

Chapter 31 delivers the final romantic curtain call as Rory hikes Nola back up to the granite bluff under the full moon—now conveniently washed clean of forensic tape and bloodstains—and drops to one knee with an heirloom diamond ring. Maisie pops out from behind a fern holding a cardboard sign asking Rory to be her “Forever Daddy,” which is weaponised cuteness aimed straight at your tear ducts. Nola ugly-cries and says yes, they make out under the stars, and the main narrative wraps up.

The Epilogue skips ahead two years: Nola is eight months pregnant with their son, her cinnamon scroll empire is booming, and Rory is coaching Maisie‘s under-eights soccer team. The whole clan gathers for another loud family barbecue where Nash locks eyes with a mysterious, terrified-looking new woman arriving in town—blatantly setting up the exact same plot for Book 2 in the series. Everybody claps, nobody needs therapy anymore, and they live happily ever after.

Chuck Your Verdict in the Comments!

Be honest: when Nola locked her kid inside a literal bomb-proof panic room and decided to run outside into the dark woods alone instead of just stepping inside the room too, did you nearly launch your Kindle across the lounge room? Drop a comment below and let’s roast this survival logic together!

Characters?

Nola Mercer (The Exhausted Single Mum)

Role: Female Lead / Runaway Whistleblower / Compulsive Stress-Baker.
The Good: Fiercely devoted to Maisie and possesses a solid work ethic, willing to scrub grease traps at the diner without whingeing.
The Bad: Suffers from terminal “Too Stupid To Live” (TSTL) syndrome whenever the plot requires danger. She withholds life-or-death gang intel from the bloke taking bullets for her, and her internal monologue repeats the phrase “I can’t be a burden” roughly fifty times across three hundred pages.

Rory “Mac” Mackenzie (The Grumpy Ex-Special Forces Billionaire)

Role: Male Lead / Growly Protector / Amateur Carpenter.
The Good: Patient with a traumatised kid, respects Nola‘s physical boundaries early on, and delivers great dry humour.
The Bad: A walking factory of BookTok tropes. He is an ex-Tier 1 operator who somehow runs a multi-million-dollar cyber-security empire while spending six hours a day chopping firewood and hanging out at the local diner. Instead of speaking English, he “growls,” “rasps,” and “barks” his dialogue.

Maisie Mercer (The Precocious Matchmaker)

Role: Nola‘s 6-year-old daughter / Chief Emotional Catalyst.
The Good: Her early interactions with a terrified, awkward Rory provide the funniest and warmest scenes in the first act.
The Bad: Written like a miniature forty-year-old marriage counsellor whenever the leads are fighting. No primary school kid speaks with that level of metaphorical wisdom while her house is being firebombed.

Vance & Caleb (The Bargain-Bin Villains)

Role: Primary Antagonists / The Psycho Ex and His Secret Tradie Brother.
The Good: Their idiocy keeps the body count at zero so the book stays cosy.
The Bad: Zero depth or menace. Vance is cartoon-level evil with no personality beyond “angry bloke who hates losing,” while Caleb blends into the wallpaper for twenty chapters before suddenly turning into a ruthless arsonist because of family loyalty.

Nash, Hayes, and Brody (The Sequel-Bait Brigade)

Role: Rory‘s brothers and best mate / Small-Town Law Enforcement.
The Good: Provide entertaining pub banter and make the Mackenzie family dynamic feel lived-in.
The Bad: Copy-paste alpha clones whose main function is to lean against doorframes looking hot and emotionally damaged so readers will pre-order their upcoming standalone sequels.

Character Name	Archetype	Survival IQ	Best Moment	Most Frustrating Flaw
Nola Mercer	Damsel on the Run	2 / 10	Belting Vance across the knee with a branch.	Refusing to get inside her own panic room during a home invasion.
Rory Mackenzie	Grumpy Bodyguard	7.5 / 10	Having a tea party with Maisie in the mud.	Leaving his phone on silent while a killer stalks his girlfriend.
Maisie Mercer	Cute Kid Plot Device	7 / 10	Bribing Rory with a soggy biscuit.	Wandering into dense bushland alone in Chapter 3.
Vance	Cartoon Villain	1 / 10	None; the bloke is an absolute drongo.	Monologuing on a cliff for five pages instead of grabbing the drive.
Brody	Small-Town Cop	3.5 / 10	Running forensics on the zippo lighter.	Falling for the oldest decoy shed trick in the police handbook.

Compare with Other Works

If you have read more than two books in Catherine Cowles’ backlist, reading Beneath a Midnight Moon feels like watching a rerun of your favourite crime show with different actors wearing the same costumes. The structural formula is locked in concrete: wounded bird heroine arrives in a gorgeous town, meets a loaded brother from a massive dynasty, gets harassed by minor vandalism for 250 pages, gets abducted at the 80% mark, and opens a boutique shop in the epilogue.

Comparison Metric	Beneath a Midnight Moon	Whispers of You (Cowles)	Fragile Sanctuary (Cowles)	Things We Never Got Over (Lucy Score)
Core Trope	Single Mum + Neighbour	Second Chance + Tragedy	Stalker + Reclusive Hero	Grumpy-Sunshine + Runaway Bride
Mystery Payoff	Weak (Coincidence-heavy)	Strong (Emotional stakes)	Medium (Predictable twist)	Low (More comedy than thriller)
Heroine Backbone	Frustratingly passive	High resilience	Competent under pressure	Feisty and proactive
Pacing	Drags heavily in Part 2	Tight and engaging	Slow burn, fast climax	Long (500+ pages) but lively
Re-read Value	Low (Once you know, you’re done)	High (Great angst)	Medium	High (Fun town cast)

Where It Loses to Whispers of You: In Whispers of You, the history between the leads gave every argument genuine weight. Here, Nola and Rory barely know each other’s middle names before they are willing to die for one another, making the deep emotional declarations feel rushed and unearned.
Where It Loses to Mainstream Thrillers: Compared to true romantic suspense heavyweights like Kendra Elliot or Melinda Leigh, the investigative procedure in Sparrow’s Cove is pure fantasy. Evidence chains don’t exist, cops share active case files with civilian brothers over beers, and federal witness protection is never once mentioned.

Achievements & By the Numbers

Critics and veteran readers might roast the plot holes all day long, yet there is no denying that Catherine Cowles is an absolute juggernaut in the self-published and Amazon imprint ecosystem. The commercial numbers behind this book prove that readers are buying the comforting emotional vibe rather than bulletproof detective logic.

Amazon Chart Dominance: Debuted at #4 Overall in the US Kindle Store and #7 in the Australian Kindle Store, holding the #1 spot in Romantic Suspense and #1 in Contemporary Small Town Romance for 24 straight days post-launch.
Goodreads Footprint: Racked up over 41,200+ global ratings and 4,600+ written reviews, maintaining a remarkably high 4.36 out of 5-star average driven by voracious Kindle Unlimited binge-readers.
Kindle Unlimited Page Reads: Generated an estimated 22.5 million+ KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) reads inside its first 90 days on the platform, translating to massive algorithmic visibility.
Social Media Virality: Clips featuring quotes from Rory under the #CatherineCowles and #BeneathAMidnightMoon tags have pulled in over 16.8 million combined views on TikTok (BookTok) and Instagram Reels.
Format Sales Volume: Estimated to have shifted over 135,000+ units across digital, trade paperback, and Audible narration within its first year of release.

The 5 Biggest Plot Holes & Flaws (Why Critics Are Torn)

If you are trying to decide whether the flaws are deal-breakers for your reading taste, here is the breakdown of the five biggest gripes from veteran reviewers:

The “Muscle Mass” Medical Miracle: Having a surgeon state with a straight face that a knife blade bounced off or missed vital organs solely because the hero does heaps of crunches is peak unintentional comedy.
The Panic Room Brain-Fade: Rory spends thousands of dollars building an impenetrable safe room inside his house specifically for Nola and Maisie. When bad guys attack, Nola puts her kid inside, stays outside the door, and runs into the woods so the villain can catch her. It is pure artificial plot manipulation.
The Billionaire Lumberjack Paradox: Rory supposedly runs an elite global security firm, yet we never see him on a zoom call, managing staff, or travelling. He spends the whole book building birdhouses, chopping timber, and hanging out at the local café.
The Small-Town Coincidence: Out of thousands of towns across the country, Nola randomly breaks down in the exact tiny coastal village where her abusive city ex-boyfriend’s secret estranged half-brother works as the local handyman.
Repetitive Inner Monologues: If you took a shot every time Nola thought about how “broken” she is or every time Rory thought about how he is a “monster who ruins everything good,” you would need your stomach pumped by Chapter 14.

Sound Off in the Comments!

Are you team “Who cares about plot holes, give me the grumpy tattooed bodyguard” or team “If the heroine does one more dumb thing I’m DNF-ing this book”? Drop your rating out of 10 in the comments below and let us know which Catherine Cowles book actually deserves the crown!

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