When the Smoke Clears by Lynette Eason [3.5 stars]

When the Smoke Clears by Lynette Eason
From back cover:
After a brush with death due to equipment failure, smoke jumper Alexia Allen is ordered to take time off while the incident is under investigation. She makes a last-minute decision to recuperate at her mother's home and attend her high school reunion. Yet trouble seems to be following her, and within hours of arriving home she is confronted with murder, arson-and a handsome detective.
But the conflicts ahead are nothing compared to the ghosts of her past. As she struggles to accept and forgive her family's past, she must also decide if the secret she's been guarding for the last ten years must finally come to light.

Let me start off by saying I am not a huge fan of Lynette Eason's last books, the Women of Justice series. I found them to be very predictable, so much so, that in one of the books I figured out the killer in the first 30 pages. But, I'm all for second chances and was hoping this book might redeem itself. While it was a little more difficult to figure out the killer, I did figure it out pretty early on and was rather disappointed with who it was. I won't say why, as I don't want to give the story away, but if you read this, you'd understand.

Being from Washington, I was hoping this book was going to be based there, and I was a little disappointed that it wasn't, but that's just me. ;)

Anyways,
I read a lot of suspense and thrillers, and I thought the amount of 'bad things' happing in this book was too much. It was just one thing after another after another! I think if the author would've halved the amount of attempts on Alexia's life and it would've been ok. It was definitely overkill, (Please excuse the pun.) and got to the point where the 'unexpected' was very expected.
I was also disappointed with the fact that this book is called When the Smoke Clears, and Alexia is a smokejumper, that there was no firefighting/smoke jumping aspect to the story like I was hoping for.

Now for what I DID like...
Alexia's story and background were interesting, and I found Alexia to be a strong character despite all she'd been through. But I felt like there was something missing to that would have made her a truly great character.
The romance aspect was not too cheesy or over the top, very well done.
The main themes throughout this book are Alexia dealing with her past and forgiveness. I liked that while this was a Christian book, it didn't come across as preachy.