You Can Tell Me by Melinda Leigh

You Can Tell Me by Melinda Leigh
Publisher: Montlake
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Cholla

On the three-year anniversary of true crime writer Olivia Cruz’s horrific kidnapping, she’s scheduled to walk her podcaster friend Zoe March through the crime scene, but Zoe fails to show. Olivia knows Zoe would never stand her up—not today.

Zoe’s husband, who claims she never came home the night before, has reported her missing. But marital conflicts make the police suspect she has left him. Olivia thinks otherwise. The police aren’t looking for Zoe, so Olivia begins her own investigation. Retracing her friend’s last steps, she finds Zoe’s phone and a text with one chilling word: Run.

It soon becomes apparent that Zoe has been keeping secrets, and with her true crime podcast, there’s no telling what she has unearthed. To find her, Olivia must dig into her friend’s past. Did Zoe vanish to escape a killer, and is Olivia walking into a deadly trap?

Olivia Cruz knows that horrible things can happen to good people. When her longtime friend, Zoe March, fails to show for a meeting, her mind immediately jumps to the worst. But is it truly something nefarious or did Zoe just tire of her husband and leave to start a new life? That is the thing that Olivia is determined to discover, whatever the end result might be.

Three years ago, Oliva was kidnapped as a PR stunt and has been dealing with the trauma of it ever since. It was pretty impressive how well she coped with it all, and how her boyfriend, Lincoln, helped her without smothering or controlling her. Loved that she was a reporter turned true crime writer, made her reasons for wanting to find Zoe more understandable and less reckless.

Zoe March was the character I was most interested in, however. When the main character starts to find out that their good friend – Zoe, in this case – has been keeping secrets, I’m immediately engrossed, wanting nothing but the truth. As Olivia discovers, Zoe has been keeping a lot of secrets, for a very good reason. The tidbits of Zoe’s past are doled out a little at a time, making it hard for me to stop reading. I needed to know!

You Can Tell Me is a fast-paced, engrossing mystery. I was sucked in right from the start. First, I wanted to know about Olivia’s past kidnapping. Then, once Zoe fails to show, I needed to know where she’d gone, what had happened, and why. It was also different having a true crime writer searching for her true crime podcaster friend. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Leigh’s writing in the future. But first, I need to scour her backlist and see if Olivia’s story is told in any of them because that is a story I need all the details on.