Set in both Adelaide and Mount Barker, Cassidy Blaire runs a charity kitchen for the homeless called The Kettle. One day when walking in the hills, a Porsche driver loses control of his car and ends up in a dam submerged. By the time Cassidy reaches him he seems to have drowned but she manages to perform CPR on him and revives him before the ambulance arrives. Lyle Fuller, a financial advisor and very wealthy, insists on taking Cassidy to dinner to thank her. Meanwhile The Kettle is in need of repairs and Darren Travers starts volunteering his services as a tradie.
This book did draw me in and so I quickly finished it but I did have a number of issues with it. I haven't read the author before but if you set a book in a place, especially a town as small as Mount Barker, you should do your homework. I have lived in Adelaide for most of my life, and in Mount Barker for a few years so know both places well. A couple of times the author states that Cassidy can see the Adelaide skyline from the Mount Barker summit. This is simply not possible so it annoyed me. Then there was the plot. This book is both a mystery/murder/thriller and a romance. The plot involving Lyle Fuller contains many holes and loose ends which was also annoying. But on the plus side, it is always fun to read a book set in your own home city and the story was intriguing if not original.

I loved the characters in No Good Deed, which is set mostly at a soup kitchen called The Kettle in the Adelaide Hills. This story is mostly mystery with a dash of romance thrown in. Cassidy Blaire is easy to empathise with: she’s got a heart of gold and spends her time caring for her sick father and the soup kitchen clients, whom she calls parishioners. I did feel that she was a rather weak in her dealings with wealthy Lyle Fuller, a man with a hidden agenda, but overall I was cheering her on from the sidelines. Darren Travers, her love interest, was also a great character and in many ways seemed more real to me than Cassidy. These two are supported by some terrific secondary characters, Abe and Wheezie, an elderly homeless couple, being my favourites. The story itself flows well for the most part although I found the mystery a bit predictable and the romance a bit sudden. Overall though this has been a good debut novel for author Diane Hester.

This is a good story it had me turning the pages to get to the end and work everything out, it is fast paced and so very well written a great romantic suspense, I loved the setting and I do hope that you will pick this one up I didn’t want to put it down.

Cassidy Blaire is a busy twenty two year old woman who runs a soup kitchen The Kettle in Adelaide, while caring for her ill father and searching for her sister Eve who has been missing for two years, romance and a fun life is not for her. But while out running in the Adelaide Hills one cold morning Cass saves the life of a man in a car accident and this will change her life.

Lyle Fuller is thrilled that Cass who he calls his guardian angel has saved his life and because he can afford it he is more than happy to shower Cass with flowers, gifts and donations for the kitchen and is happily wooing her, one suitor is more than enough for Cass but then there is Darren Travers a builder who offers to volunteer with work that is badly needed to keep the soup kitchen open after the last council inspection and he seems to be wooing her as well. Cass worries about the homeless people she serves daily and is very friendly with most of them Zoe is now a permanent volunteer and close friend but there seems to be a lot of vandalism going on and when threats are made to Cass both Lyle and Darren are there but are they both there for the right reasons?

This is a fabulous suspense, my heart was in my stomach on more than one occasion and I felt like pushing some of the characters in the direction I thought was right, I loved Cass what a beautiful person inside and out so caring for these people that need help after all she had been through, never putting herself first and there are so many other characters that helped make this a great story. This first book I have read by this author but it won’t be the last. This is one that I highly recommend.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy to read and review.

No Good Deed by Diane Hester is a romantic mystery with drama. Cassidy Blaire cares for her father who is recovering from chemotherapy and she runs a non-profit soup kitchen for the homeless. She lives with her father on their large family estate. Cassidy had an argument with her younger sister after the death of their mother. Evie left home and has not been seen in the past two years. One reason Cassidy keeps the soup kitchen going is the hope that her sister might come in seeking assistance.
One morning during her run, Cassidy watches in horror as a sports car passes her and runs off the road over a small cliff. she calls for emergency services and tries to rescue the driver.
The Kettle is undergoing another inspection. The building is old and needs a lot of repairs, but Cassidy hopes the repairs will not be too extensive. An investor has been urging Cassidy to sell the property to him, but she wants to keep the kitchen going. to feed the homeless.
Soon Cassidy has two different men in competition for her attention. Lyle Fuller is the man Cassidy saved in the car wreck. He seems to be wealthy and of a good character. Darren Travers is a man Cassidy has mistaken for homeless because he appeared at the soup kitchen a couple of days. His clothes were very worn, and he stayed to himself. He is attracted to Cassidy and wants to spend more time with her. One of these men is living a lie. He is dangerous and has selfish motives for wanting to get close to Cassidy.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Cass’s day starts off with a bang when, out on her morning run, she witnesses an out-of-control sports car crash into a river and her intervention saves the driver’s life. Wealthy, suave Lyle Fuller is extremely grateful… and very interested in Cassidy. But she doesn’t have much space in her life for romance, too busy running The Kettle, her charity kitchen feeding the unhoused of Adelaide. No room for Lyle, or for hunky builder Darren, who’s busy helping bring The Kettle’s building up to council standards so they don’t get evicted.

Lyle comes over as a bit off from the beginning, and we get enough glimpses into his point of view to know his motives aren’t good, but honestly I struggled to like Darren too as he came off both bossy and judgy, and the fact that he forced a kiss on Cassidy put him into Nope territory for me. The reveal of his backstory made him a little more sympathetic, but there are still things you do not do.

There were quite a few things here that didn’t make sense - why Lyle wanted to cover up his brakes being sabotaged instead of reporting it to the police, for one. We never did get an explanation for that, and considering who actually did it, I really don’t understand why Lyle wouldn’t report it and let the police deal with it, since he’d been cleared of earlier wrongdoing. Why he’d changed his name - that was mentioned a couple of times and then just dropped. Why Cass had a violin worth ‘half a million dollars, or maybe twice that’ just laying around unused at home when she was worried about money. I fully understand she wouldn’t sell it because of its sentimental value, but there are professional violinists who would pay good money to rent an instrument of that quality! She could have funded her entire operation at the Kettle easily on that money.

I wanted to like this; there’s not a lot of Australian-set romantic suspense around. It probably needs a brief glossary to appeal to international readers - non-Aussies won’t get what ‘the pokies’ are, for example - but considering all the things wrong with the plot and the romance, that’s a small matter. The author made the mistake of making Darren a bit too unlikable so that Cass had more reason to consider Lyle, setting up the love triangle, but it wasn’t necessary. Darren didn’t have to be perfect, but less bossy and judgy would have been useful, and then we could have had less words expended on Cass dithering about whether to trust him and more on resolving actual plot points.

There are things to like about this, but too many dropped or illogical plot threads and a hero I couldn’t warm to mean I can’t even say ‘it was okay’. Two stars is the best I can give it.

Jogging through the bends in the Adelaide Hills felt good to Cassidy Blaire – her life was a busy one with caring for her father as he recovered from chemotherapy and running The Kettle – a soup kitchen for the homeless – on a shoestring, so her early morning runs were her saving grace. But the morning she heard a roaring engine and screeching tyres from behind her, was the day her life altered significantly. When the car sailed through the railing and down into the gully below, Cass yelled at a passerby to call 000 while she scrambled down to the vehicle. Saving the life of the man in that vehicle was something she didn’t think about – she just did it.

Lyle Fuller was extremely grateful to Cass, but as he showered her with roses and other gifts, she felt overwhelmed. Getting on with work at The Kettle stopped her dwelling on current events, and with the local Council demanding renovations be done to The Kettle – and where was she likely to get the money for that! – Cass had enough on her plate. Her volunteer and friend Zoe was by her side as they worked in the kitchen, preparing food and soup for their many parishioners (as Cass liked to call them) but with another man working on some repairs (another volunteer) there was much happening. And little did they know it, but there was more going on in the background. Someone wasn’t who they seemed; someone had evil on their minds…

No Good Deed is the latest gripping, chilling thriller by Aussie author Diane Hester and I couldn’t put it down! Intense, suspenseful, breathtaking – when I start talking to the characters in the book, you can bet it has got me enthralled! Set in Adelaide, in and around the city and Adelaide Hills – all areas I know well – was particularly good as I could envision it all. No Good Deed is a great read which I recommend.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

Very Suspenseful Romance
This is the kind of book that gives me vivid dreams. Not necessarily nightmares, but just my sub-conscience working on the book. In reading the story, you know that some things are too good to be true and something is wrong at the same time. Bizarre characters and weird happenings fill the chapters until reality rears its face. Wow! I received this ARC book for free from Net Galley and this is my honest review.

Although a quick read, unfortunately this book was a miss for me. The book didn't hold my attention and I struggled to get through it. I didn't care for the two male characters and Cass came across as a bit too naive. Although there was a lot of built up suspense, I pretty much figured it out early on. Just not for me.

You know when you are watching a horror movie where it is perfectly clear that they shouldn't go down into the basement, and you are yelling at the TV that they shouldn't go down into the basement, and then they all go down into the basement and terrible things happen? That's how I felt reading this book.

Cass is a very sweet character, but she works so hard to think well of everyone (other than the hero, who she seems determined not to like) that her kindness verged on naivete. It was incredibly frustrating. Darren had a bit more common sense, but he has an amazing ability to stand in his own way.

This story did do a good job of building suspense and there was a good bit of mystery in how the story came together, but the villain was pretty clear from very early on in the story, and the suspense mainly came from waiting for Cass to figure this out before she got murdered too. I realise that this is a valid way to write a suspense novel, but it isn't one that works for me. I would also have liked a villain who had a touch more motivation for his villainy. This one just wandered around being dubiously charming and deceitful while doing terrible things. There was not a lot else too him.

I'm undoubtedly the wrong reader for this book; if you are fond of suspense and enjoy an Australian setting you might like this more than I did.

This was an okay read for me. I love romantic suspense books, but only when the author has the right combination of suspense and romance. I feel like the author was heavy on suspense and light on romance. There was no heat in the story and the relationship that the heroine ultimately forms seems to develop rather quickly and unbelievably. If you like a suspense book with a dash of romance, this read might be for you. But it was unfortunately a miss for me.

This book did not hold my interest.Even though there were two men I didn't care for either of them, one won over the other for obvious reasons. However it was a quick read.