Spiraled by Kendra Elliot

I really enjoy this series, and I was thrilled when Net Galley offered me the chance to read it early. In my opinion, the author totally nailed it when she wrote Mason and Ava into life. They are such a realistically believable couple. Nothing is ever really easy for them, but they create an ease and peace for each other. They just seem to truly get each other and relate on a plane that is more actions than words. I like seeing how they not only want each other but now have enmeshed to the point of truly needing each other.

In this story, Ava tends to be the main focus. The vacation she is using to recover from events in the previous book is interrupted when she lands in the middle of a mass shooting in the mall. Ava is trapped trying to save a gravely injured friend and ends up relaying information back to law enforcement via her phone. When the dust settles, so to speak, and Ava is reunited unharmed with a beyond frantic Mason, she uses Mason's assignment to the case as a way to hold her fears and post traumatic stress at bay by inserting herself into the investigation. As Ava and the team uncover more and more clues pointing to a killer mastermind, Ava becomes a target of the killer's hatred.

To add even more tension to the mix, when Ava's mentally unstable twin sister goes off the deep end, Ava finally takes the advice many, including Mason, have given her and stands up to her. She stops allowing herself to be walked all over in an effort to keep the peace and tells her sister how she really feels and how she is affected by her sister's tantrums. The stress of breaking life long patterns shakes Ava, and when her sister takes life threatening action in retaliation, Ava is broken. Mason fears for her sanity and tries frantically to hold her together while Ava fractures on the inside.

Ava tries to use the case to help her focus, but will the case end up saving her or killing her?

This book was the best yet in the series for me. The deepening of Ava and Mason's relationship, the changes Ava tried to make in her relationship with her twin, and the current events type of believable action had me glued to the story. While not at all a cliffhanger, the ending did leave me wondering what's next for Mason and Ava and anxiously awaiting the next book.