Well. I didn’t expect to be traumatized by hogs this week, but well, here we are.
After the Storm is another excellent installment in the Kate Burkholder series, and it kicks off with a tornado that rips through town and literally unearths a decades-old skeleton. Cue secrets, small-town scandal, and the kind of Amish drama that makes you want to look twice at your neighbor's barn.
The deeper Kate digs, the more tangled things get. There are hidden pasts, mysterious deaths, family tension, and just when you think things can’t get any darker, someone gets murdered in a way that ensures I will never look at pigs the same way again. Ever. I like bacon, but now it feels personal.
I loved the pacing, the emotional depth, and how Kate’s own trauma is always simmering under the surface. She’s tough, smart, and just the right amount of emotionally wrecked to keep things interesting. And like all wonderful Linda Castillo books so far, the “whodunnit” genuinely surprised me. I thought I had it figured out. I did not. At all. Just knock me over with a feather.
In short: small-town secrets, a big storm, emotional damage, and one heck of a hog-related plot twist. What’s not to love?
