Half Moon Bay

By: Meryl Sawyer

Narrated by: Emily Beresford

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

When her witness protection cover is blown, Amy Conroy flees across the country. With no money and only her dog for company, she steals rides in the trunks of unsuspecting strangers' cars until a tragic accident lands her in a Key West hospital, where she is mistaken for the dead driver.

Undergoing reconstructive surgery, Amy becomes almost the mirror image of beautiful Shelly Ralston. Even Matt Jensen, the investigative journalist Shelly was obsessively in love with, believes Amy's the deceased woman. As Amy lives a lie, she begins to fall for Matt herself and soon discovers how deep passions can run. But her idyllic days in Key West are numbered.

©2016 Meryl Sawyer (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC

More Realism Please

While portions of Half Moon Bay were entertaining, the basic premise seemed too far fetched to be entertaining. Amy, a brilliant young woman with a scarred face just happened to be in an accident where that part of her face was damaged, while she was hiding from her former boss, a violent criminal.

Although Amy's story was heart-breaking and griping, it didn't make sense that she refused to trust anyone in the federal government, just because the safe house where she was living was compromised. Hitchhiking is never a good idea.

I wanted to Amy to learn how to take care of herself - get a gun, take self-defense classes, do something - rather than hope that a man would be there to protect her. The author stressed Amy's high IQ, so I guess that I expected more.

Could have been a great story!

What would have made Half Moon Bay better?

The narration was so strange! Odd intonations by the narrator and the attempt at performing different voices was just terrible.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I would recommend more and better research into the medical references and listening technology. It was very elementary and borderline ridiculous.

How could the performance have been better?

Spend some time with different voices and maybe make them sound believable rather than distracting?

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointed that it started strong and fizzled into the ridiculous.

Gratuitously, unnecessarily crude

This is a mystery set in Key West, two of the qualities that are almost always guaranteed to attract me. I finished it, however, one because I always finish any book I start. It was difficult to do so because of the graphic descriptions of the two main characters sexual encounters (e.g., of course their public hairs were curly, but why did I have to be told that TWICE). Worse yet, even though the quotes came from the mouth of a villain, perhaps to underscore how despicable he was, I was jolted by gay men’s being referred to with such language as “fag” and “fudge packet.” This was the first of two “Key West Mysteries.” I will not be reading the second.