Her First Mistake by Kendra Elliot

Montlake, 2025

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1662525773

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

Thirteen years after the unsolved murder of a member of the California state legislature, the case is reopened byf the FBI, and Detective Noelle Marshall finds herself in the middle of it. However, this job is going to be challenging for Noelle, because she is the wife of the victim and was attacked and left for dead during the crime.

This thriller shifts back and forth between the past, the recent past, and the present right from the start. There is a large cast of characters, including those who worked on the original case, family members, and friends of Noelle’s and her husband’s. The characters are developed enough to make them distinctive, but they are not complex enough to excite much speculation about their possible role in the murder.

Because Noelle was at the scene on the fateful day and cannot remember what happened, there had been speculation as to whether she might have faked her own attack and killed her husband. However, because so much of the emphasis is put on Noelle’s perspective as part of law enforcement, that intriguing idea seems to go out the window quite quickly.

Kendra Elliot carefully builds the plot and effectively creates a world that suggests these are real people living real lives after a terrible event. Ironically, for that reason, there is less urgency, drama, and excitement than this reader looks for in a thriller. It is disappointing that even the more intriguing parts of the book, like those focusing on Noelle’s relationship with her husband before their marriage, disappear, as the plot loses momentum midway through.

Elliot plans to develop a series based on this book and has found successful readership to this point in earlier books. It will be interesting to see how she grows the story after this  first installment.

Reviewed by Nova Hadley