excellent story! Beautifully written. ( )

This was a pretty good book, but incredibly long. The story itself was well thought out, but extremely complex so it took the first few hundred pages or so to get all the pieces in place. Once things started coming together, I found it much easier reading. Tempted to make this a 3-star book for dragging, but 4-stars because the good bits are really, really good.

For me, the Tohono O'odham cultural elements, specifically, and southern Arizona, in general, make this book special. This is about THE WALKER FAMILY and being long they all kind of got on my nerves. Lani Walker, the 16 year old daughter, was the focus. Did I mention that the book was long? Yeah, Lani could be quite boring as well, but ultimately her story ends on a high note. The stepson Brian Fellows was the most enjoyable for me even though his time on the pages was on the short side.

Anyway, another J.A. Jance worth reading. ( )

From Amazon:

Twenty years ago, a darkness rose up out of the blistering heat of the Arizona desert and descended upon the Walker family of Tucson.
A personified evil, a serial killer named Andrew Carlisle, brought blood and terror into the Walkers' world, nearly murdering Diana Ladd Walker and her young son, Davy. Now much has changed. The family has grown larger. There's Lani, the beloved adopted daughter—a beautiful Native-American teenager "kissed by the bees" and destined, according to Tohono O'odham lore, to become a woman of great spiritual power. And now the psychopath Carlisle has died in prison, so Brandon and Diana Walker believe they and their loved ones are safe at last. They are wrong. The monster is dead, but his malevolence lives on . . . in another.

My Thoughts:

This book is part two of Hour of the Hunter. So unless you wish to be entirely clueless you need to read that one before this one. The climax was gripping, but there was a long, slow, roundabout route to get there. There were too many characters and the back story was too sparsely delivered, with an Indian legend at the beginning of EVERY chapter that made you wonder whatever did it have to do with the story? After a while...as interesting as they were...they became tedious and difficult to follow. Diane and David...who were strong characters in the first book...were very shallow and mostly unbelievable in this one. 3 stars was all I could give this one and actually it probably should have been 2.5 but the 1/2 a star is because I have read this authors Beaumont series for years and know how much better she can do. ( )

The second book in her new Sheriff Walker series. I recommend it, but must say I had some issues with the slow pace at which it starts. You must be patient with all the set up. It's worth it. ( )

Kiss of the Bees is the second in J.A. Jance's Walker-Ladd family series. Because the book is so plot driven, this is a spoiler-free review so as not to spoil the book for anyone. It's therefore brief.

This story jumps ahead 20 years from the first book, Hour of the Hunter. The first part of the book is used to catch the reader up on the happenings of the family but then the story from the first book continues, against expectations, into this one. Like the first installment, this book is slow to start then becomes a page-turned about mid-way.

Jance continues to introduce each chapter with a bit of Papago Indian folklore. This helps cement a sense of place within the desert of Southern Arizona amongst the Tohono O'Odham people.

I'm a fan of Jance's writing but I'm becoming particularly fond of this series. The plots in her other works are always interesting and have plenty of twists, but the characters are a bit shallow. In this series, she's taking the time to thoroughly develop her characters. Quite a bit of this story is internal dialogue and you get to experience the growth of some characters and better understand their viewpoint as a Native American. There are quite a few interesting heroes being developed for future works in this series and I'm looking forward to diving into the next book, Day of the Dead. ( )