Stumble Stones: A Novel

Sweet romantic suspense. Stumble Stones follows an unlikely couple on a multi country effort to find the owner of some found precious gems. They find clues in the unlikeliest of places including the stumble stones. I really like Hallelujah and was thrilled that Alexander didn’t give up. I could have done without the bouncing around between points of view but I enjoyed the story none the less.

I absolutely loved the creativity of this novel and the adventurous James Bond aspects, but the execution of the story fell short. Without spoiling the content, I felt like there were gaps in the story especially at key moments where a detailed explanation of what happened would have been helpful. As a result, both the action and the romance felt a bit flat for me.

I loved both Hallelujah and Alex as characters and as a couple, but I felt that there story was thrown together a bit. In order to do justice to them and the story within a story of the stumble stones and the family the stones honored, the book needed to be longer.

Hallelujah Weiss is a writer for the soap opera As the Planet Spins and when her divorce is final she decides to take a lesson from her characters and do something a little daring taking off on a trip. On the plane Hallelujah finds herself seated next to a man that asks if she will watch a package for him as he gets up for a moment but when he doesn’t return Hallelujah gets curious and finds herself holding a large collection of diamonds.

Upon landing Hallelujah finds herself coming into contact with Alexander Stone who seems to have brought Hallelujah into danger by setting her up with the diamonds. With their lives on the line the pair take off on a journey to return the stash of WW II vintage jewels to their rightful owner.

While I understand what the author was trying to do with Stumble Stones I have to say this story just really didn’t work for me. The idea that Hallelujah wants to be more like her soap opera characters and be daring and adventurous sounded good in theory but while reading this book the way it came together just wasn’t to my liking.

The story has bits of dialog of the characters Hallelujah has written to let a reader know their personalities. Then we have Hallelujah and Alexander and their adventure they end up going on. Plus the book tries flashing back to a horrible time in history to show how the diamonds ended up being taken from their owner. Now to me the current story line ended up feeling a bit cheesy and over the top and just didn’t mix well with the dark history period being involved. Of course this is all just my own feeling and others have seemed to like this one but unfortunately it just really didn’t seem to be my cup of tea.

I received a copy from the publisher via NetGalley.