Book Tour Feature – A Light in the Forest by Melissa Payne

Happy Thursday! Another book feature today and one that should be on your radar.

Thanks to GetRed PR and Lake Union Publishing for the gifted copy

A LIGHT IN THE FOREST – Melissa Payne (Released December 13th, 2022)

You can see my feature post and mini review for her other book, THE NIGHT OF MANY ENDINGS, here

Book Description:

From Melissa Payne, bestselling author of The Night of Many Endings, comes an emotional and suspenseful novel about the weight of secrets and the healing power of friends and family.

Vega Jones escapes an abusive relationship with nothing but her two-month-old baby and the van she grew up in. Her destination is a small Ohio town her late vagabond mother left years ago. It’s one full of nobodies, her mother warned. That makes it the ideal refuge for Vega to lie low, feel safe, and maybe learn more about a past her mother never spoke of.

Vega warms to the town and to new acquaintances like Heff, the young deputy and artist who prefers his yard art to actual policing, and empathetic Eve, a local farmer whose near-death experience gave her more than just her life back. But even in this welcoming community, there’s an undercurrent of something unsettled, talk of a tragedy that unfolded in the woods years ago, and a mystery connected to Vega in ways she couldn’t have anticipated.

As a mother on the run and following a path of mounting risks and illuminating secrets, Vega discovers that even during the darkest of times, there’s light in unexpected places.

About the Author:

Melissa Payne is the bestselling, award-winning author of The Secrets of Lost Stones and Memories in the Drift. For as long as she can remember, Melissa has been telling stories in one form or another—from high school newspaper articles to a graduate thesis to blogging about marriage and motherhood. But she first learned the real importance of storytelling when she worked for a residential and day treatment center for abused and neglected children. There she wrote speeches and letters to raise funds for the children. The truth in those stories was piercing and painful and written to invoke a call to action in the reader: to give, to help, to make a difference. Melissa’s love of writing and sharing stories in all forms has endured. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her husband and three children, a friendly mutt, a very loud cat, and the occasional bear.

Mini Review: 3.5/5 stars

This is my second book by Melissa Payne (the other being THE NIGHT OF MANY ENDINGS) and just like with her other book, this was really good but there was something that I felt wasn’t there or missing. I couldn’t tell you exactly what but when I finished I was hoping for something more. I will warn readers that this does have to do with domestic violence, sexual abuse, and some animal cruelty, so if those are topics you don’t care to read about then I’d pass on this. There’s no doubt that Payne knows how to write a compelling story and characters you really feel connected to – there was a little repetition with some phrases but otherwise the pacing and flow was nice and consistent. I definitely recommend this and her other book but I just can’t quite put my finger on what didn’t completely work for me. Will I pick up more from her? Absolutely!