Parts of this were brilliant. It started before the man's wife and child died so you get to experience that with him. It was sad and moving. I was totally invested in the hero. The heroine not so much. Mostly because she just seemed unrealistic. 28 years old and stuck at home cooking for the menfolks on the mountain? No one wanted her because she was born with a crooked foot? I just couldn't get behind her poor me-ness. She was also very similar to the heroines in both Miracle Man and When You Call My Name by Ms. Sala. The villain and all that was a bit unbelievable. So all in all not a bad read. The writing was well done as usual with Ms. Sala but the romance came out of nowhere and the heroine and hero basically fell in love without spending more than about 2 hours in each other's company. Not her best. ( )

Typical Sharon Sala suspense. ( )

I have not read a lot of novels by Sharon Sala over the years. Actually I have read more of her books when she writes as her pseudonym, Dinah McCall. Really I have a lot of Sala’s book in my pile to be read. So I need to get reading them!I thought Missing was a well written romance-suspense. Truthfully I would call it more of a suspense novel. There really was not a lot of romance in it. I think the book would have benifited with a little more romance. This really was a powerful story. It kinda teared at your emotions in different ways. With all that Wes went though. Even Ally had her heartships. I think how the plot was thought out made it even more of an interesting read. The beginning of the book was about war, families, and terrorism. The middle was more of a small town/country type story. And the ending felt a little more sci-fi almost. In regards to dealing with the effects of the toxic illegal drug being harvested. Overall the book keep me entertained. ( )

Before my review I must comment on the author herself. Ms. Sala may have turned me back on to suspense novels. She is a wonderful author. What Nora Roberts does for all romance genres, Sharon Sala does for suspense! Ok. Now on to my review!

"Missing" by Sharon Sala gives readers an "in your face" look at what happens to an army officer after surviving the ravages of war, both over seas and at home. Colnel Wes Holden served in Iraq proudly and came home suffering from Post Tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Glad to be home, Holden is attempting to recover from his PTSD and enjoy his family when the war finds him at home.
Skip ahead, Wes is recovering his sanity in a small town up on a mountain. He meets Ally Monroe, a "past her prime" woman with a limp taking care of her father and brothers. Ally changes Wes's life in ways he never anticipated. What Wes and Ally didn't expect was the trouble brewing on the mountain or what they would lose before it was over.
This book is a page turner that will keep your interest while educating you on what our fighting men and women deal with when the war is over. ( )

For Colonel John Wesley Holden, a soldier in the Special Operations division of the Army, risking his life fighting terrorism in a desert thousands of miles away is part of his job. In the back of his mind, however, he's always wondered how safe he and his family are back in the United States. His wife, Margie, and his son, Mikey, are the only things that kept him sane during his months spent as a prisoner of war. When a man manages to infiltrate an Army base commissary and blows it to bits, causing the death of the only two people he's been able to love, Wes knows the truth-the enemy has followed him home.

Wes becomes lost in a near-comatose state; visions of past wars flicker constantly through his mind, his hold on reality is fragile at best, and is slipping away fast. It will take more than a miracle for this man to become anything like who he was in the past. It's not a miracle that forces him out of the hospital on a medical discharge, but it's nothing short of one, when he wanders aimlessly into Ally Monroe's backyard.

Ally is a late-twenties woman in a mid-forties body. She's tired, lonely, and fed-up with spending every minute of her day taking care of her widowed father and two middle-aged brothers. She dreams of a handsome, mysterious stranger walking out of the woods behind her house-he'd ask her for a drink of water, they'd fall madly in love, and her Prince Charming would rescue her from a life of catering to others.

When Wes Holden stumbles into her yard, asking for that drink of water, Ally is scared to death. How can this be? And how is it that the man she thought would rescue her seems to be the one needing rescuing? With an old woman giving her psychic cryptic messages, Wes ensconced in her dead dwarf uncle's cabin, and her brothers becoming odder and odder after working in the fields of a neighbor, life as Ally knows it is suddenly anything but ordinary.

MISSING is Ms. Sala's romantic suspense at its best. Strong emotions, vivid characters, and the underlying sense that all is not right make this a great book. I highly recommend it to all lovers of the genre. ( )