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Surfacing Secrets (Elemental Evidence 3)
By Bellora Quinn and Sadie Rose Bermingham
Pride Publishing, 2018
Five stars

This third chapter in the saga of Ilmarinen Gale and Jake Chivis is even better than the first two. Why is that? Probably because I’ve gotten to know and like both Mari and Jake. They are young, brilliant, and endowed with psychic talents beyond the normal—but this makes them difficult as well as appealing. Both Mari and Jake have suffered at the hands of bad guys because of their talents, but they also suffer because they lack full understanding of how best to control and make use of their skills. I can’t delve into that in a review because it would spoil the fun; but it’s a powerful theme that both draws them together and pushes them apart.

The core of this story is Mari’s stumbling onto a dark website and seeing what he believes to be a snuff film. He is so horrified that he becomes obsessed with it, and draws Jake into his struggle not to get lost in his quest to solve the mystery.

What Quinn and Bermingham do so well is to write great characters, but also to weave complicated plotlines that are exciting and not confusing. For all their good looks and smarts, both Mari and Jake are self-sabotaging in the way that wounded people are. The reader roots for them to solve the mystery, but just as much for their relationship to survive the stresses of their complicated personalities. They are enormously appealing men, and their flaws are relatable to those of us who do not happen to have paranormal psychic powers.

For all its satisfying resolution, there clearly has to be more of these two men in the writers’ future. I do hope so.