Just Finished Reading Mean Streak by Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown is a prolific romance and thriller writer, rapidly churning out books each year under her own name and others.  I'd never read anything of hers until I recently checked out her 2014 novel Mean Streak from my local public library.  Previously, I had avoided romance literature and thought that this particular book would veer away from that genre.  To some extent it did, but Brown nevertheless felt the need to inject graphic romantic interludes that she apparently is comfortable with in other novels. It seemed a bit awkward because they really weren't necessary to advance the story or the characters...I'm guessing that a lot of Sandra Brown's fans expect this stuff with her books and so there it is.  Aside from that, I liked the suspense and mystery as Emory, a married young woman doctor in Georgia, after falling during a solo twenty-mile training run in the high wilderness along the North Carolina border, wakes up in a strange man's isolated cabin.  This man, who claims to have found her unconscious and brought her back to care for her, refuses to take her back down the mountain to civilization because of the fog.  Emory strongly suspects him of having attacked and abducted her...who is he (he won't name himself) and why does he seem to be hiding way up here?  Meanwhile, Emory's husband Jeff, who is having an affair behind her back with Alice (one of her physician colleagues), comes under suspicion from the local sheriff's office when she doesn't return after a few days missing...

I thought Sandra Brown had a terrific story here, and it wasn't until I was about three quarters of the way through it until I began to suspect who turned out to be the culprit...Mean Streak, more than anything, is a mystery thriller...with some seedy romance thrown in.  If that's your preferred kind of reading, go for it!  She is a good storyteller...maybe I'll explore other books of hers, although that might not happen for a little while...