Great installment in the Bree Taggert series. The only reason why I didn’t give this 5 stars was that Bree was being ridiculous about how the video with her images would not affect things as sheriff. It just felt very naïve for a detective that worked in Philadelphia and has seen a lot of things. I also thought that parts of the book didn’t even make any sense. The whole militia movement subplot could have been cut honestly. That said, the book characterization, writing, and flow worked very well. And it’s nice to see Bree and Matt taking their relationship public.
“Dead Against Her” follows Bree as she goes to a farm house to conduct a wellness check. She doesn’t realize upon entering though that she is going to find and elderly woman murdered and a former deputy, Eugene Oscar, tied up and murdered too. Followers of the series will know the issues Bree had with Eugene (FYI I loathed this character) and though she didn’t care for him, is determined to find out who killed him and the woman at the scene that she and Matt find out is Eugene’s mother. Along with that though is that someone is releasing deep fake videos of Bree involved with sex acts. And Bree is getting harassing emails from someone threatening to rape her. With the local council starts to demand that Bree start addressing these issues, she tries while also trying to solve the murders.
So Bree at times will drive you a little crazy in this. The deep fake videos read as terrible and grim. And when they go viral she doesn’t even think about warning her niece and nephew about them. Let alone that others will see it and reporters may ask questions about it. This subplot does allow us to see Morgan again so can’t complain. I will say though that until Bree talks to Morgan, it seems like she was going to just continue and ignore how things look. This isn’t the first time in the series where Bree mentions she hates politics and just wants to be sheriff, but the old one was corrupt and Bree has to worry about getting re-elected someday.
Matt was solid in this. He kind of drove me crazy in other books because he didn’t seem to grasp how things could look for Bree if their relationship got out. Now in this one, it is revealed and he realizes what it means for her and finally gets it. I actually liked their romance in this one more. It’s still a quiet one though and so if you are looking for any love scenes, there’s not one included in this installment.
The other characters like Matt’s sister and Bree’s chief deputy are given their own third person points of views and it definitely added to this book.
The writing was great and it was interesting to see how all the pieces came together in the end with the first two murders that started off the book. The whole militia plot point as I said above just seemed like it could have waited until another book.
I definitely enjoyed the ending and we get to see Bree and Matt taking their relationship to a more public level with the press, friends, and fellow law enforcement.
