Review: Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone

A bestselling romance novelist has written a novel of suspense and Kerry Hammond is eager to tell us how much she loved the book.

Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone is a standalone novel of suspense that was published on August 1, in Hardcover by Lake Union Publishing. Victoria Helen Stone is the nom de plume of author Victoria Dahl, who has more than 25 books under her belt. Her genre has primarily been romance and she has only recently turned her skill toward the mystery and suspense genre. I, for one, am happy she did.

Jane Doe is a story about a woman who is single mindedly focused on meeting, seducing, and ruining one man. As the story progresses we learn her reasons, her plan, and just how cold and calculating she can be. And from page one, we are placing all of our hopes on her success.

They say that people read mystery novels and detective fiction because they like to see justice done. They like to see the good guys prevail and the bad guys punished. I think that’s true, at least for me as a reader, and this is part of the reason I loved Jane Doe. I enjoyed watching Jane on her cold and calculating quest for her own form of justice. When a story is written in first person, the narrator is also the protagonist and you have to feel something for that person. You have to identify with them or care about them in some way. As unlikely as Jane might seem as a person with whom a reader might bond, it happens, and once it does, the readers wants her to succeed. I honestly didn’t even care how she chose to go about exacting justice, I was behind her 100%, in her corner no matter where she took me.

Stone is a gifted storyteller and I loved her writing style. There wasn’t a single excess word, paragraph, or scene. Her writing is a concise narrative that takes hold of the reader and doesn’t let go. I hope to see many more books by this author.

This book was provided to Mystery Playground by the publisher. The review is fair and independent.