So.. I'm in the minority on this one. Overall, I just didn't connect with this one. I was absolutely hooked at the start. The beginning of this book is strong, and I was excited to tuck into it.. Unfortunately, it totally lost steam for me about a third of the way into it.

I think there was a little too much going on, and too many simple connections to every single plot line/character. It felt simultaneously overwhelming and simplistic. It was obvious where it was all heading, and yet painfully slow to actually get there. I really liked all the main characters though, aside from Tori. Sadie in particular was a really interesting character. I love the concept of Devlin and Sadie teaming up to take down bad guys. I liked their moments together. Falco wasn't entirely unnecessary, but he honestly didn't add too much for me, either.

Back to Tori. Her entire plotline was a waste of time, frankly. I wasn't interested in any of it for a second. It was so obvious what had happened, it was so much high-school-girls drama AND the (as another reviewer put it,) "woo woo" aspect was ridiculous and uninteresting, as well. It was also annoying that she repeatedly refused to talk to her mom about what happened/was happening or to tell anyone the truth at all, actually. My kid IS a clam-up kind of person, but not when there is danger involved. It felt pretty unbelievable that she'd behave the way she did, having a detective for a mom and with what happened to her cousin.

I wouldn't continue on with this series, but it's not exactly terrible. Just not for me, perhaps.

Thank you to #netaglley and #thomasandmercer for providing me with a complimentary ARC of this story in exchange for my honest review.

I love Debra Webb and I'm upset with myself. I got the first one and this one as audio books to try audio for the first time.. I did not like the experience BUT I loved the story. I'm going to have to get these in physical book copies and read them again.

I really like this series, and not just because the main character shares my name (the exact spelling too!). Devlin and Falco are at it again in this thrilling mystery. This time they're investigating a double homicide that includes the murder of a DDA. When Devlin is called to her daughter's school for an incident involving a fall down some stairs, everything starts to spiral out of Devlin's control. They won't let her investigate her daughter's case officially so she sets out on her own. Working the double homicide case and her daughter's case, only to find that they're linked. There's a suicide pact, bullying and a drug cartel. Not to a mention a former BPD's officer strange past that is revealed with flashbacks and dual POV. The only thing I wish I could see more of with this series is a little romance, it's hinted at that Devlin and Falco might become an item, but I wish I could see more. Otherwise, a really great crime procedural that I enjoyed!

In Gone Too Far, Webb continues her series about Detectives and partners Devlin & Falco. This time Devlin’s daughter is considered a suspect in a school incident that leaves a girl dead. Meanwhile a prominent attorney and a bar owner are both found dead and the clues point to a connection between a cartel and someone high up in Birmingham leadership.

As Devlin & Falco work on both cases, they find themselves going down paths that may also solve the mystery of their friend Sadie Cross’s time undercover.

TERRIFIC story line with lots of suspense, enjoyable characters, well written leading up to a great conclusion. Great series & looking forward to #3 which has been purchased for our library due to my request. RECOMMEND highly. Thanks to NetGalley & Thomas & Mercer for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Really enjoyed this book! It was the first one for me to read by this author and I can't wait to read more! The characters stick with you long after the book is over.

Gone Too Far by Debra Webb
Devlin & Falco #2

I have a feeling that this is a series better read in order and I did not read the first book in the series leaving me feeling that I didn’t really know the main characters as well as I should have. I ended up skimming to find out the gist of the story but must admit I did not read word for word – and there were a lot of words in this book with over 400 pages. I felt that the story could have been edited down a good bit to make it tighter and flow at a faster pace.

This book had more than one storyline that eventually overlapped by the end of the book. It begins with a gut-wrenching prologue set five days before the story picks up in real time. Next up is a murder to be solved and that is for Devlin & Falco to sleuth out. Add in an issue with Tori, Kerri Devlin’s daughter, that is much deeper and more deadly than expected. AND, there is another thread of a woman who was an undercover agent who has lost part of her memory and her story also overlaps the others. There are a number of questionable characters, red herrings, evil doers, problems to solve, murderers to suss out, and…more. The threads of the various plots didn’t come together till the end and some of them left me scratching my head.

So, this book is a mixed bag for me. I could see the way it was plotted and the way the story was being told would work for many but it did not draw me in, hold my attention, have me reading and hanging on every word, and eager to read the next book in the series. I had trouble relating to the characters and am not sure if that, again, is due to not having read the first book in the series.

Did I enjoy this book? Not so much, it was “okay”
Would I read more by this author? Maybe, if the blurb really caught my attention

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC – This is my honest review.

2-3 Stars

3.5 Stars

This was a good read. Like the characters and setting.
I really want to read the first book now. LOL
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

When a young girl falls down a staircase in high school, the girls that were around her are suspected of murder. Brendal Meyers, a local bully, will not be missed by her classmates.

Kerri is a local homicide detective who is investigating the case of a respected local businessman and an Inspector with the major crimes’ investigative division. Kerri and her partner Falco are on the scene to investigate the crimes. Kerri is pulled from the case because her daughter was one of the girls at the top of the stairs. Kerri is torn because she wants to investigate but is forbidden to get involved. Her daughter is one of the suspected students. Can she clear her daughter?

Debra Webb’s characters point out some of the competition, prejudices, and jealousies that exist in most large organizations including the investigative division of the Birmingham police department.

There are twists and turns that kept me guessing as I read the story. How could the head of the division expect Kerri to stay away from her daughters’ problem?

Could a local pillar of the community and a young ADA be involved in the importation of drugs? One of the girls at the head of the stairs seems to be connected to the international drug cartel, however, there is no proof.
I found the twists and turns in this novel a motivation to continue reading. The death of a young person and the saving of Kerri’s daughter and solving the crime kept me continually engaged. 5 stars-CE Williams

FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley and these are my unbiased opinions.

Gone Too Far is a story with-in a story keeping your interest from the very beginning and ending with a huge surprise twist! The characters are all wonderfully created and entwined together and I love how even in the midsts of all the intense chaos there is a family vibe!! Sadie Cross is a former undercover detective who has lost her memories but she is tough and spunky and relentless and along with Detectives Falco and Devlin they are determined to find out who has killed Asher Walsh the new DDA. I could not put this book down it has a momentum that draws you in and keeps you hostage!!!#GONETOOFAR #NETGALLEY

4 1/2 STARS!

Debra Webb hooked me from the first page! With the second in the Devlin and Falco series, GONE TOO FAR brings murder and turmoil too close to home when the ADA is murdered right under the nose of a former police detective and Devlin and Falco are left to decipher the pieces as danger is nipping at their heals. Great suspense, interesting characters and more twists and turns than you can count. I'm looking forward to more from these two!

One double homicide takes them on a run through corruption while what feels like a bullying situation turns into so much more before they can think twice.

I highly recommend this book and the entire series to anyone who enjoys a fast paced police investigation with tidbits of family life and office politics mixed in throughout.

First off, my heartiest thanks to Netgalley for providing me this book, something that has gotten close to my heart exciting me with the investigatory, and deduction rush and the thrill of discovering the truth in a way no lesser than its predecessor, Trust No One

Debra, my God! When I ended up with this one with Devilin and Falco yet again, I just wanted to pull you into a huge embrace. She hasn't failed to pull off her sequel that involves Kerri and Falco yet again after Trust No One and it stops no short of being called splendiferous.

The book starts exactly one year after Kerri's niece Amelia Swanner's death. Kerri has been through a lot, and so has Tori, and her closeness to Falco put a smile on my face. Debra starts this in the same style as she started the first one, except it isn't Kerri in trouble in the present. Tori gets lured and fears getting killed. The roll out proceeds to a flash back, approximately a week before Tori gets kidnapped. Kerri and Falco are hired to investigate the double homicide of Leo Kurtz, an opulent tobacconist, and Asher Walsh, the hotshot DDA of Birmingham. The BPD fears excess media dramatics owing to Asher and his opulence. The homicide is suspected mostly to have occurred due to a line that squeaky-clean perfectionist Walsh seemed to have crossed, except a lack of correlation between both the victims makes it a bit more complex.
If this must plague Kerri one side, there is Tori with a truckload of issues from the other side. Her classmate Brendal Myers is pushed from the stairs, critically injured, and the only suspects the school, Brighton Academy knows are Tori Devilin, Sarah Talley, and Alice Cortez who were there with Myers at fall. Kerri has to take up on that not just because she needs to protect her daughter, but also because she knows Tori wouldn't conceal anything anymore after what minor she hid that led to failing Amelia. OFC, this doesn't settle well with Sykes and Peterson, the two other detectives heading the case, and they go at loggerheads with Kerri and push Tori under the scanner as Myers bites the dust.

"Sometimes, intelligence wasn't enough to keep you alive. "

Throughout the novel, I had to stop myself from jumping, after making myself move with the detectives and unfurling the truth. It was fast paced, nail biting, and damned to good. I proceeded with what Debra tried to convey in her last novel, trust no one. This time, everyone was a suspect to my brain, eliminating one if and only if their connection got weaker.
The novel is more chilling and splendiferous in a way because we get to know Sadie's scarred past and everything that happened to her when she went undercover. Sadie Cross needs to fit together her fuzzy confunded memories, and she is the only one who can help Kerri and Falco, and also the reason why Walsh was dead. Except, her memory plays tricks on her, and she isn't sure about the information she delivers.
One thing that made me love, and adore the novel more was the threesome investigation- Piecing Kerri, Mapping Falco, and Swift Sadie, and the chill just got a bit more feverish with her gang, Heck Keaton and Snipes.
On the other hand, it also revealed some of the dark aspects of going undercover.

"Going Undercover was sort of like acting. If you wanted the academy award, you had to buy all the way into the part. It had to be real. Had to be you. Sometimes you did really bad shit to give the best performance."

I felt the most for Sadie, and after her for Mason Cross, her father. She was broken, scarred, with fuzzy pieces of her past, and denied the right to know every hell that went on in her life. The Osorio Cartel brought her down, sending her off on an infinite vacation, letting her loose, but she really had a right to know everything.

" 'You were extremely lucky.'
'I guess that depends on how you define lucky.'
'You lived.'
'Did I?' "

" She was like Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put her together again."

The character development was something I damned loved. Let it be Kerri Devilin, Luke Falco, Tori Devilin, Sadie Cross, Alice Cortez, Sarah Talley, Ruthless Mason Cross, Asher Walsh, Tara McGill, Sue Grimes, Leo Kurtz, Asher Walsh, Naomi Taylor, Leland Walsh, Lana Walsh, Emma Warren, The Cortez family, everything was just perfect. She wonderfully played with how people with the perfect mien of opulence went to damning lengths just to hide their perfect facade.

"People, no matter the position they held, had secrets. Sometimes those secrets were terrible things they had done or were doing."

I could pride myself in solving one of the case, and half in the other case. But Naomi Taylor's twist, Mason's position were some things that caught me off guard. Overall, this is the perfect read of what I had always wanted, with the relation between Tori and her mum better than last time, and Tori trusting her mum enough to come out, moments with Falco, and the threesome were a lot of what I enjoyed.
Thanks a lot Debra for this wonderful novel. I just loved, loved, loved, damning loved it. It's the best. Do give it a shot bibliophiles. Trust me, it is worth the read.
PS: Can be read as a standalone, but reading 'Trust No One' before can give you an idea of what happened. Some hints pop up in the book :)
No waiting on my horses for the third, 'Can't go Back.'
You did it again, girl!!

Gone Too Far is book 2 in Debra Webb’s Devlin and Falco series. In all honest I did not read book 1 (going back now to read it) but I did catch on to the characters but feel it would have been better I read book 1 first. Fast paced and some times a bit unbelievable but intriguing story. Multiple seemingly unrelated crimes come about and the team is there to figure out what’s going on. Want more with Falco and Devlins associate Sadie for sure. Enjoyable read by Debra Webb.

Wow, there was just so much going on here and unfortunately every time I picked up the book I was so tired that I had to backtrack to familiarize myself with where I was in the narrative. My fault. There were a lot of names - many too many, more than one storyline, at least that is what the reader is led to believe. Very clever, very well thought out, so many tentacles reaching and grabbing and strangling, very scary and that is before you begin to deal with Sadie, her history, her relationships, her nightmare. I loved Sadie. What I didn’t love was the repetitive dialog:”She is a good kid, she would never, she could never.” It would have been more effective to wonder if maybe a good kid could, would or did.

This is a strong and clear police procedural as well as a deep look at working personalities who have to interact when one is in crisis. Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for a copy.

3.5 stars

This was a solid, fast-paced read that on the whole kept me guessing (and up late reading). I enjoyed getting more of Sadie's tragic backstory, I felt like it helped us to understand her better in some ways and added a depth to her that she was lacking in book number one. It was also nice to see Tori (Kerri's teenage daughter for those new to the series) come across as a more mature version of herself (although still with a lot of teenage angst and the troubles that come with being a teenage girl). I was glad to see she was able to give her mother a bit more leeway this go-round and not be such a brat.

I wish I could say I felt the same about Kerri and Luke. While we are told that they work together easier now (trusting each other more after the events in book one), and we see that they are much friendlier (he eats dinner with her and Tori frequently), I don't feel as though we got to see anything new from them. We didn't learn anything we didn't already know, it was instead of moving forward the way Sadie did, these two simply continued to exist in their small town police force.

And what a small town it was. I found I had the same issue with this novel as I did with the first in that everything was just a little too convenient. I mean what are the chances that a missing link to Sadie's past would just so happen to show up in the same small town years later AND be connected to an ongoing case?

Thankfully, what saved this one (for me at least) was the amount of times the author managed to surprise me. Just when I thought I had figured out the who, the what and the why, a new piece of information was revealed that had me sitting there going ohhhh well I didn't see THAT coming. There was just enough of that scattered throughout the book (although more towards the end), that it kept me glued to the pages to find out what would happen next.

Those things considered, I would definitely read more from this author, and look forward to continuing this series.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

I'm surprised that I somehow missed Book 1 in this series but while I believe this book would have been better if I had read Book 1 before reading this one I was soon caught up in the characters and fast paced action.  
Starting off with murder, a double murder at that of the prominent and well connected assistant DA Asher sets the ball rolling.  Asher it seems is connected to a police detective who quit the work force and now works as a PI after an undercover operation with the cartel who prey in this part of the country went awry.  Before Devlin and Falco can chase down all the clues and start building a case Devlin is called to an incident at her niece's school. 
The plots and subplots that tie all these characters and incidents together will leave you reeling and running to catch up. Just as you think you've got it all figured out the cards are thrown up in the air again and off you go into the next part of the maze. The secrets, connections and surprises just keeping coming at you as you feverishly try to get ahead. 
This is an exhilarating story with deep characters and layers that has me panting for the next book in the series. I'm a fan of Ms. Webb but this story really has Ms. Webb at her best with a definite edge. I can't wait to see where things will go next for this intrepid pair.

The book has some unrelated cases for the police to handle. Teenage girls are involved in a death from a girl falling down the stairs at school. There are 2 deaths in a tobacco shop. A school counselor is dead. And an older woman has her house broken into. That is just a few of the characters and their stories. But the book starts out with a police woman under cover in a drug cartel. So much going on but nothing seems to gel. Devlin and Falco are the detectives assigned to the murders. Then the DEA takes over. Sadie Cross was a police woman damaged undercover. She makes a nice third person to help figure out who dunit. The ending is a surprise I didn't see coming. Some of the ending is predictable but some is just a shocking surprise. I enjoyed the book.

So I had the same problems with this book as I had with the first book: everyone knew everyone involved in the case and everyone and everything was way too intertwined for it to really be close to plausible. I realize it is fiction, but these books make Birmingham feel like a super small little insular town. I had hoped that was going to be something unique to the first installment as we were introduced to the main characters. So, while I liked the underlying plots, I struggled with how coincidental everything is. If that isn't a problem for you, following Devlin and Falco as they solve two different crimes, including one they are told to stay away from, is an enjoyable read.

Webb is one of my go to authors. She has great characters and intriguing story lines. The first chapter of this book threw me - it didn’t make sense until the very end. It is helpful to have read the first book in the Devlin & Falco series Trust No One prior to this one. Although the references to book one are sufficiently explained, the background on the characters does help.

This is the second in the Devlin and Falco series. I didn't read the first book, and while I was still able to enjoy this one, I'm feeling I definately want to go back and read the first. It's been awhile since I've read Debra Webb...and now I'm wondering why I've been neglecting her books because this one was a fantastic read! Devlin and Falco end up in the middle of a case involving the execution style death of a DDA and a local businessman. They suspect a drug hit. Before they can get far the case is taken over by the DEA and tragedy strikes close to Devlin and her daughter Tori. Things start progressing at a frantic pace. They enlist the help of Sadie Cross, a former cop and currently a private detective. Sadie is trying to recover some lost memories from when she was working undercover, and she also had ties to the victims. The story moves along quickly and you can never be sure who is who, or what their motives are. Surprises abound....with the biggest at the very end. I happily recommend Gone Too Far if you enjoy a good suspenseful story.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.