Kara Thomas, Out of the Ashes

This book starts out well. Samantha Newsom, driving past a police cruiser, reminds herself not to behave like a criminal:

"I hadn't killed anyone. Not yet."

That line hooked me for a while. Sam is heading back to her hometown to take care of that "yet," and while there, she confronts the defining fact of her life—the unsolved murder of her family and her life afterward as the unloved ward of a miserable relative. She also starts playing private detective, hunting down old acquaintances and anyone who might have some insight into her family's fate.

About halfway through the book, I realized that there were too many characters I couldn't keep straight and too many crimes Samantha became interested in solving. And I lost count of how many different people she thought were behind the murder of her family. By the time I found out who actually did it, I didn't care. I think this book had a lot of promise. I just felt like I was drowning in extraneous details after a while.