When you’ve already died, there should be nothing left to fear… When Adam Ramsdell pulls Elle’s half-frozen body from the surf on a lonely California beach, she has no memory of what her full name is and how she got those bruises ringing her throat.
GIRL LAST SEEN
Elle finds refuge in Adam’s home on the edge of Gothic, a remote village located between the steep lonely mountains and the raging Pacific Ocean. As flashes of her memory return, Elle faces a terrible truth—buried in her mind lurks a secret so dark it could get her killed.
POINT LAST SEEN
Everyone in Gothic seems to hide a dark past. Even Adam knows more than he will admit. Until Elle can unravel the truth, she doesn’t know who to trust, when to run and who else might be hurt when the killer who stalks her nightmares appears to finish what he started…
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Elise’s Thoughts
Point Last Seen by Christina Dodd blends mystery, action, with a tinge of romance. With her descriptive words she takes readers to the setting of Gothic, off the Big Sur coast. This first in a new series has well developed characters and an intense plot where the setting plays a major role since everyone there has a dark past.
Readers meet Adam Ramsdell, a town recluse by his own choosing. He likes to keep to himself until one of the town’s residents needs help. One of the occupants, Madam Rune, a fortune teller, alerts him that he will find “a lost soul coming to challenge his being.” While at the ocean he finds a body wrapped in plastic. As he carries her over his shoulder Elle starts breathing. Realizing she is not dead he takes her to his place for refuge since she is badly bruised, and it appears she was strangled. Unfortunately, she cannot remember any details of what happened to her. In the meantime, she grows close to Adam and makes friends with other townspeople forcing Adam to come out of his shell. As her memory slowly comes back with the help of Adam and Madam Rune, they all realize how much danger Elle is in.
Fans of Dodd will not be disappointed. She combines into the story twists, emotions, and an edginess that will keep readers turning the pages.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Will this be a series?
Christina Dodd: This is the first book set in Gothic. The setting will be the series, not the characters.
EC: The idea for the story?
CD: I was writing a book set on a cruise line and then Covid hit. Because they were shut down, I realized I was in deep trouble. Then I had an idea about a woman rolling up on the beach unconscious. After she awakes, she cannot remember where she is from. I think this idea came to me because I was working with the ocean and the cruise lines. It was written while I was in Covid isolation.
EC: What was the role of the Gothic setting?
CD: It was a character. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and was captivated the first time I went up to Big Sur. This spring my husband and I drove up the coast. I thought how Big Sur seems to be immune to civilization because I wanted a place where people could disappear, and lost souls could come there.
EC: What role did the ocean play?
CD: It creates everything and is very dominant, controlling all the weather. It is so primal and creates atmosphere for the story. One of my earliest memories is standing on a beach and my great aunt said, ‘don’t ever turn your back on the ocean.’ It can be scary and glorious. There are storms, frothy and frosty waves crashing against the rocky cliffs, with different colors, and the great sea breeze. The ocean plays with fate since it brought Adam and Elle together.
EC: How would you describe Elle?
CD: Brilliant but trusted the wrong person. Briefly traumatized. A strong sense of self. She can be resilient, smug, and witty.
EC: How would you describe Adam?
CD: A loner, tragically wounded. I think this is Adam’s story. He has good instincts, very cautious and alert. Protective, stoic, and compassionate. He is grieving and feels guilty.
EC: What about the relationship?
CD: She is Adam’s salvation. Elle makes him interact with people. He ends up terribly invested in her. In the beginning, she is more open to having a relationship than him. He is afraid anyone he cares about will die.
EC: What about the bad guy Penderghast?
CD: He is a bully who enjoys seizing power. His scientific vessel that he financed was a great thing to do. But his personality of being arrogant, cruel, and self-centered overshadows that.
EC: Next book?
CD: It is set in Gothic and titled Forget What You Know, coming out in March of next year. The plot has a car pulled out of a lake with a dead body shot in the head and a precious statue in the back seat. The heroine is a flower breeder, the heir to this statue.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for POINT LAST SEEN (Last Seen in Gothic Book #1) by Christina Dodd on this HQN books blog tour.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
From New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd comes a brand new suspense about a reclusive artist who retrieves a seemingly dead woman from the Pacific Ocean…only to have her come back to life with no memory of what happened to her. With a strong female protagonist, a chilling villain, and twisty secrets that will keep you turning the pages.
LIFE LAST SEEN
When you’ve already died, there should be nothing left to fear… When Adam Ramsdell pulls Elle’s half-frozen body from the surf on a lonely California beach, she has no memory of what her full name is and how she got those bruises ringing her throat.
GIRL LAST SEEN
Elle finds refuge in Adam’s home on the edge of Gothic, a remote village located between the steep lonely mountains and the raging Pacific Ocean. As flashes of her memory return, Elle faces a terrible truth—buried in her mind lurks a secret so dark it could get her killed.
POINT LAST SEEN
Everyone in Gothic seems to hide a dark past. Even Adam knows more than he will admit. Until Elle can unravel the truth, she doesn’t know who to trust, when to run and who else might be hurt when the killer who stalks her nightmares appears to finish what he started…
POINT LAST SEEN (Last Seen in Gothic Book #1) by Christina Dodd is the first action-packed romantic suspense in this new series written with plenty of thrills and quirky inhabitants in the small Pacific coastal town of Gothic.
Adam Ramsdell has found the privacy he seeks in Gothic, CA as he works to turn salvaged metal into works of art and works as an armorer. When the local fortune teller tells Adam he must go the beach, he goes for the peace the ocean brings him but discovers a half-frozen body being tossed out onto the beach. He believes she is dead until he throws her over his shoulder to carry to his ATV and she revives as she brings up the sea water trapped in her lungs.
Elle has no memory of how she ended up on the beach, but she knows she has been strangled, beaten and is deathly afraid of a large dark shadow. As flashes of memory slowly return, she begins to endear herself to the people of Gothic and discover Adam’s secrets. She cannot remember much, but she knows she can trust Adam to protect her.
As Elle works to recover her memory, she doesn’t realize that those out to end her life are near and Adam has his own demons from his past that may well be out for revenge also. Will they be able to survive their pasts for a future together?
There are several plot threads throughout this romantic suspense that all come together to make a wonderful read. Adam is the tortured hero with the difficult past and his transformation from loner to lover was well paced and believable because the town already looked up to him even though he did not acknowledge it. Elle is a strong and determined heroine even without her memory, she asked for the help she needed it, but also stood up for herself. The town’s cast of characters were quirky and added some humor to the story as well as hiding secrets that I hope will be divulged in future books in this series. After the HEA, I assume each new book will have a new H/h and the town’s cast of characters and the location itself is what will be continued in this series. I will be looking forward to more.
This is a romantic suspense that will keep you reading until the very end.
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Excerpt
two
A Morning in February
Gothic, California
The storm off the Pacific had been brutal, a relentless night of cold rain and shrieking wind. Adam Ramsdell had spent the hours working, welding and polishing a tall, heavy, massive piece of sculpture, not hearing the wailing voices that lamented their own passing, not shuddering when he caught sight of his own face in the polished stainless steel. He sweated as he moved swiftly to capture the image he saw in his mind, a clawed monster rising from the deep: beautiful, deadly, dangerous.
And as always, when dawn broke, the storm moved on and he stepped away, he realized he had failed.
Impatient, he shoved the trolley that held the sculpture toward the wall. One of claws swiped his bare chest and proved to him he’d done one thing right: razor-sharp, it opened a long, thin gash in his skin. Blood oozed to the surface. He used his toe to lock the wheels on the trolley, securing the sculpture in case of the occasional California earth tremor.
Then with the swift efficiency of someone who had dealt with minor wounds, his own and others’, he found a clean towel and stanched the flow. Going into the tiny bathroom, he washed the site and used superglue to close the gash. The cut wasn’t deep; it would hold.
He tied on his running shoes and stepped outside into the short, bent, wet grass that covered his acreage. The rosemary hedge that grew at the edge of his front porch released its woody scent. The newly washed sunlight had burned away the fog, and Adam started running uphill toward town, determined to get breakfast, then come home to bed. Now that the sculpture was done and the storm had passed, he needed the bliss of oblivion, the moments of peace sleep could give him.
Yet every year as the Ides of March and the anniversary of his failure approached, nightmares tracked through his sleep and followed him into the light. They were never the same but always a variation on a theme: he had failed, and in two separate incidents, people had died…
The route was all uphill; nevertheless, each step was swift and precise. The sodden grasses bent beneath his running shoes. He never slipped; a man could die from a single slip. He’d always known that, but now, five years later, he knew it in ways he could never forget.
As he ran, he shed the weariness of a long night of cutting, grinding, hammering, polishing. He reached the asphalt and he lengthened his stride, increased his pace.
He ran past the cemetery where a woman knelt to take a chalk etching of a crumbling headstone, past the Gothic Museum run by local historian Freya Goodnight.
The Gothic General Store stood on the outside of the lowest curve of the road. Today the parking lot was empty, the rockers were unoccupied, and the store’s sixteen-year-old clerk lounged in the open door. “How you doing, Mr. Ramsdell?” she called.
He lifted his hand. “Hi, Tamalyn.”
She giggled.
Somehow, on the basis of him waving and remembering her name, she had fallen in love with him. He reminded himself that the dearth of male teens in the area left him little competition, but he could feel her watching him as he ran past the tiny hair salon where Daphne was cutting a local rancher’s hair in the outdoor barber chair.
His body urged him to slow to a walk, but he deliberately pushed himself.
Every time he took a turn, he looked up at Widow’s Peak, the rocky ridge that overshadowed the town, and the Tower, the edifice built by the Swedish silent-film star who in the early 1930s had bought land and created the town to her specifications.
At last he saw his destination, the Live Oak, a four-star restaurant in a one-star town. The three-story building stood at the corner of the highest hairpin turn and housed the eatery and three exclusive suites available for rent.
When Adam arrived he was gasping, sweating, holding his side. Since his return from the Amazon basin, he had never completely recovered his stamina.
Irksome.
At the corner of the building, he turned to look out at the view.
The vista was magnificent: spring-green slopes, wave-battered sea stacks, the ocean’s endless surges, and the horizon that stretched to eternity. During the Gothic jeep tour, Freya always told the tourists that from this point, if a person tripped and fell, that person could tumble all the way to the beach. Which was an exaggeration. Mostly.
Adam used the small towel hooked into his waistband to wipe the sweat off his face. Then disquiet began its slow crawl up his spine.
Someone had him under observation.
He glanced up the grassy hill toward the olive grove and stared. A glint, like someone stood in the trees’ shadows watching with binoculars. Watching him.
No. Not him. A peregrine falcon glided through the shredded clouds, and seagulls cawed and circled. Birders came from all over the word to view the richness of the Big Sur aviary life. As he watched, the glint disappeared. Perhaps the birder had spotted a tufted puffin. Adam felt an uncomfortable amount of relief in that: it showed a level of paranoia to imagine someone was watching him, but…
But. He had learned never to ignore his instincts. The hard way, of course.
He stepped into the restaurant doorway, and from across the restaurant he heard the loud snap of the continental waiter’s fingers and saw the properly suited Ludwig point at a small, isolated table in the back corner. Adam’s usual table.
Before Adam took a second step, he made an inventory of all possible entrances and exits, counted the number of occupants and assessed them as possible threats, and evaluated any available weapons. An old habit, it gave him peace of mind.
Three exits: front door, door to kitchen, door to the upper suites.
Mr. Kulshan sat by the windows, as was his wont. He liked the sun, and he lived to people-watch. Why not? He was in his midnineties. What else had he to do?
In the conference room, behind an open door, reserved for a business breakfast, was a long table with places set for twenty people.
A young couple, tourists by the look of them, held hands on the table and smiled into each other’s eyes.
Nice. Really nice to know young love still existed.
There, her back against the opposite wall, was an actress. Obviously an actress. She had possibly arrived for breakfast, or to stay in one of the suites. Celebrities visits happened often enough that most of the town was blasé, although the occasional scuffle with the paparazzi did lend interest to the village’s tranquil days.
She wasn’t pretty. Her face was too angular, her mouth too wide, her chin too determined. She was reading through a stack of papers and using a marker to highlight and a ballpoint to make notes… And she wore glasses. Not casual I need a little visual assistance glasses. These were Coke-bottle bottoms set in lime-green frames.
Interesting: Why had an actress not had laser surgery? Not that it mattered. Behind those glasses her brown eyes sparked with life, interest and humor, although he didn’t understand how someone could convey all that while never looking up. She had shampoo-commercial hair—long, dark, wavy, shining—and when she caught it in her hand and shoved it over one shoulder, he felt his breath catch.
A gravelly voice interrupted a moment that had gone on too long and revealed too clearly how Adam’s isolation had affected him. “Hey, you. Boy! Come here.” Mr. Kulshan beckoned. Mr. Kulshan, who had once been tall, sturdy and handsome. Then the jaws of old age had seized him, gnawed him down to a bent-shouldered, skinny old man.
Adam lifted a finger to Ludwig, indicating breakfast would have to wait.
Ludwig glowered. Maybe his name was suggestive, but the man looked like Ludwig van Beethoven: rough, wild, wavy hair, dark brooding eyes under bushy eyebrows, pouty lips, cleft in the chin. He seldom talked and never smiled. Most people were afraid of him.
Adam was not. He walked to Mr. Kulshan’s table and took a seat opposite the old man. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Don’t call me sir. I told you, call me K.H.”
Adam didn’t call people by their first names. That encouraged friendliness.
“If you can’t do that, call me Kulshan.” With his fork, the old guy stabbed a lump of breaded something and handed it to Adam. “What do you think this is?”
Adam had traveled the world, learned to eat what was offered, so he took the fork, sniffed the lump and nibbled a corner. “I believe it’s fried sweetbread.”
Mr. Kulshan made a gagging noise. “My grandmother made us eat sweetbread.” He bit it off the end of the fork. “This isn’t as awful as hers.” With loathing, he said, “This is Frenchie food.”
“Señor Alfonso is Spanish.”
Mr. Kulshan ignored Adam for all he was worth. “Next thing you know, this Alfonso will be scraping snails off the sidewalk and calling it escargots.”
“Actually…” Adam caught the twinkle in Mr. Kulshan’s eyes and stood. “Fine. Pull my chain. I’m going to have breakfast.”
Mr. Kulshan caught his wrist. “Have you heard what Caltrans is doing about the washout?” He referred to the California Department of Transportation and their attempts to repair the Pacific Coast Highway and open it to traffic.
“No. What?”
“Nothing!” Mr. Kulshan cackled wildly, then nodded at the actress. “The girl. Isn’t she something? Built like a brick shithouse.”
Interested, Adam settled back into the chair. “Who is she?”
“Don’t you ever read People magazine? That’s Clarice Burbage. She’s set to star in the modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s…um…one of Shakespeare’s plays. Who cares? She’ll play a king. Or something. That’s the script she’s reading.”
Clarice looked up as if she’d heard them—which she had, because Mr. Kulshan wore hearing aids that didn’t work well enough to compensate for his hearing loss—and smiled and nodded genially.
Mr. Kulshan grinned at her. “Hi, Clarice. Loved you in Inferno!”
“Thank you, K.H.” She projected her voice so he could hear her.
Mr. Kulshan shot Adam a triumphant look that clearly said See? Clarice Burbage calls me by my first name.
The actress-distraction was why the two men were surprised when the door opened and a middle-aged, handsome, casually dressed woman with cropped red hair walked in.
New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd writes “edge-of-the-seat suspense” (Iris Johansen) with “brilliantly etched characters, polished writing, and unexpected flashes of sharp humor that are pure Dodd” (ALA Booklist). Her fifty-eight books have been called “scary, sexy, and smartly written” by Booklist and, much to her mother’s delight, Dodd was once a clue in the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle. Enter Christina’s worlds and join her mailing list at www.christinadodd.com.
