He Will Be My Ruin by K.A. Tucker

Title: He Will Be My Ruin

Author: K.A. Tucker

Publisher: Atria Books

Release Date: February 2, 2016

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

On the surface, Celine Gonzalez had everything a twenty-eight-year-old woman could want: a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a job that (mostly) paid the bills, and an acceptance letter to the prestigious Hollingsworth Institute of Art, where she would finally live out her dream of becoming na antiques appraiser for a major auction house. All she had worked so hard to achieve was fairly within her reach. So why would she kill herself?

A man who was supposed to be her salvation…

Maggie Sparkes arrives in New York City to pack up what’s left of her best friend’s belongings after a suicide that has left everyone stunned. The police have deemed the evidence conclusive: Celine got into bed, downed a lethal cocktail of pills and vodka, and never woke up. But when Maggie discovers a scandalous photograph in a lock box hidden in Celine’s apartment, she begins asking questions. Questions about the man Celine fell in love with. The man she never told anyone about, not even Maggie. The man Celine would change her life.

Until he became her ruin.

On the hunt for evidence that will force the police to reopen the case, Maggie uncovers more than she bargained for about Celine’s private life—and inadvertently puts herself on the radar of a killer. A killer who will stop at nothing to keep his crimes undiscovered.

Over the last three years, K.A. Tucker has become one of my absolute auto-buy authors. I don’t need to know what the book is about, I will buy it and I will read it. And I can guarantee I will love it every time. Her latest romantic suspense, He Will Be My Ruin, was no different.

If you asked anyone, they would have told you that Celine Gonzalez had everything she wanted. But appearances can be deceiving. Everyone, the police included, believes that Celine killed herself. Everyone except for Maggie Sparkes, her best friend since childhood. Maggie believes there was something more going on with Celine. The friend she knew just wouldn’t kill herself. As she packs up Celine’s apartment, Maggie discovers a lock box containing more questions than answers. In it, she finds a picture of a man Celine was in love with, a man she knew nothing about. Maggie knows something’s not quite right about everything that happened. And the more she digs for answers about her friend’s death, the more she’s putting herself at risk.

I have read and loved all the books in both the Ten Tiny Breaths and the Burying Water series. You might even go so far as to say that K.A. Tucker is one of my all-time favourite authors (spoiler alert: she totally is). So I was definitely excited about He Will Be My Ruin. I pretty much read it the moment I got my hands on it. And I will say this: it’s definitely different from K.A. Tucker’s previous books, but it didn’t stop me from loving it just as much as the ones that came before. Here’s the thing, reading all of K.A. Tucker’s other books, I’ve gotten used to romance and lots of it, so I kept expecting that with He Will Be My Ruin even though it was romantic suspense. Though romance was definitely present in the story (hello sexy rooftop garden with a hammock scene!), it wasn’t the main focus of the story. The focus of the story would have been that whole mystery, thriller part of things. Yeah, that. And to say that He Will Be My Ruin kept me guessing would be a major understatement. I typically pride myself on being able to figure out mysteries before everything is laid out in front of me. I credit that ability to excessive watching of crime shows and police procedurals. But this time, I didn’t see it coming. Like at all. I kept thinking I had what happened to Celine figured out, but then I would be given another piece of information and things just didn’t fit anymore. I literally needed everything laid out in front of me before I finally understood it all. And that’s because there were so many layers to the mystery and it just made the story that much more engaging. So yeah, He Will Be My Ruin may not have had as much romance as I’m used to with K.A. Tucker, but it had one hell of a suspense story.

I loved reading the bulk of this story from Maggie’s perspective because it meant I was finding things out at the same time as she did. Not only that, but her connection to everything made everything that much more intense. She was desperate for answers about what happened to her best friend, and her determination to get answers really spoke to how much she cared about Celine. She just didn’t want to accept that her friend committed suicide and she was ready to do just about anything to prove it, even putting herself in danger. And put herself in danger, she definitely did. Though she didn’t realize it. And that’s because, like me, Maggie was a little confused about who she could trust. And I can’t really blame her because every time I thought I could trust either Grady or Jace, something would happen to make me doubt their trustworthiness. And then I would start trusting them again. And so it went for pretty much the whole book. I’ve said it already, but I honestly couldn’t figure out who the bad guy was supposed to be or if either one of them was even a bad guy to begin with. It drove me absolutely crazy, but in the best way possible.

K.A. Tucker completely blew me away with He Will Be My Ruin. This story had so many layers and kept me guessing until the very end. And even then, I wasn’t sure I had everything right. If you love a good romantic suspense, then you need to get your hands on this books ASAP.