Cat in the Flock

Cat in the Flock

by Lisa Brunette

December 6, 2016 Book Blast

& on Tour March 1-30, 2017

Synopsis:

A sexy murder-mystery with a spiritual edge.

For most people, dreams are a way to escape reality. But for Cat McCormick, they’re a way to get closer to the truth. Cat can ‘slip’ into other people’s dreams.

After graduating college with a degree in criminal justice but little in the way of real-life experience, Cat moves from the Midwest to Seattle to apprentice with her Granny Grace, who shares the ability. Granny uses dreamslipping as a private investigator, and Cat plans to follow in her footsteps.

But forced to take work as a security guard, Cat discovers a mother and daughter on the run. Following the clues, she goes undercover in a Midwestern megachurch, where she finds redemption and goodwill amidst repression, hypocrisy, and murder.

Lisa was born in Santa Rosa, California, but that was only home for a year. A so-called “military brat,” she lived in nine different houses and attended nine different schools by the time she was 14. Through all of the moves, her one constant was books. She read everything, from the entire Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mystery series to her mother’s books by Daphne DuMaurier and Taylor Caldwell.

A widely published author, game writer, and journalist, Lisa has interviewed homeless women, the designer of the Batmobile, and a sex expert, to name just a few colorful characters. This experience, not to mention her own large, quirky family, led her to create some truly memorable characters in her Dreamslippers Series and other works, whether books or games.

Always a vivid dreamer, not to mention a wannabe psychic, Lisa feels perfectly at home slipping into suspects’ dreams, at least in her imagination. Her husband isn’t so sure she can’t pick up his dreams in real life, though.

With a hefty list of awards and publications to her name, Lisa now lives in a small town in Washington State, but who knows how long that will las

MY REVIEW

What would you do if you could experience the dreams of another person and live them as they do in order to either help them when you awake, understand their sorrows and grief or even find out more about yourself as you dreamslip into the world of your own thoughts or that of someone else. Cat McCormick has decided to take over her Granny Grace’s detective agency and uses her dreams and that of others to help solve her first case. As she closes her eyes each night she never knows where she will wind up, whose dreams she will share and when deciding to go undercover as P.I. using her psychic powers, intuition and her grandmother’s guidance she hopes to take on a Protestant flock, a Church, finding a man who is after his wife and daughter and hoping to solve what appears to be a suicide but might just be a murder.

As Cat takes on her first job as a security guard for two men who want her to guard their condo complex, she comes face to face with a young woman named Sherrie and her daughter Ruthie hiding in this vacant condo hoping that no one especially her husband will find them. Fear, anger, distrust and worry plague this young woman as Cat explains that they cannot remain there but what happens next causes her to lose her job and sending her on a trip to find more answers about Ruthie and Sherrie. Learning about them on her plane ride to her grandmother’s she entered their dreams and learned that they were escaping the Devil who was after them both. Losing them when they got off the plane and then finding them again for some reason set Cat on a path to the Plantation Church, pretending to want to find God and be save, taking on a precollege course and then hoping to find the answers she needed to solve this case. Things get out of hand as she enters the church leaving everything and everyone behind for a short time meeting Anita who runs the church with Reverend Chambers in charge since Jim is missing and his assistant is dead. Larry Price and Jim Plantation were friends and much more as the story unfolds and we learn more about their relationship and how it would impact on the church and others. As Cat infiltrates the church hoping to learn more about the apparent suicide she befriends two women named Hope and Wendy but when on the phone for her boyfriend Lee, she is overheard saying she is undercover. Will this person tell the heads of the church about her or will she be allowed to remain at least for now? Suspicions are high as Anita cross examines Cat and tries to trip her up as Cat’s alarm bells should be on high alert but for now she might have talked her way out of what Anita things and claiming that she id death- it’s the death, the death of the man who occupied the office or the death itself that she wants to know about? Going to different bars, meeting many strippers, befriending some and trying to get information from others she learns more about the church, herself, her own desires and even bonds with her mother. Her mother is into the church and has many old-fashioned Christian ways and a t times they appear at different parts of the world and cannot come together with any type of commonality until this case starts to draw them closer and asking her mother for guidance just might help her find some answers.

Flashing into different dreams that of her grandmother, her father and even her boyfriend sends her on different journeys and waking up at times calmer and at others with great trepidation as to what they mean and how she will proceed. Granny Grace is a great character who lives her life as she pleases with no constraints and yet is trying to teach Cat her special gift, how to use dreamslipping for the good and to interpret what she sees through other eyes at night not just her own.

Enter the church in as Cat moves from St. Louis to Seattle to this church in hopes of finding Sherrie and her mother but what ties it together will surprise readers as we learn about Greg the man who fired her and his ties to Sherrie and Ruthie. Each dream scene is vividly depicted as if you the reader are joining Cat and entering the dream with her experiencing the fear, the emotional upheaval, the drama and the tragedy that will take hold as she learns to deal with the consequences of her choices and more.

makes for a pleasurable read. Just who is torturing the little girl in the prologue and who is the real Devil that is haunting this child? The child and her mother are homeless but one man takes them away and hides them but you can never hide forever.
Clues are difficult to collect but when she receives certain information she convinces the police to reopen the case of Larry Price’s apparent suicide and hopefully will bring the killer and the accomplice to justice. How does she interpret the dreams? What part does Lee Stone her soldier boyfriend play and how does he remind her of his feelings for her as she has a conflict between him and another man at the end?

Lee is receiving Ranger training, her father is building vintage cars only to blow them up on the fourth of July, as her mother immersed in her own world filled with church groups and her own ways. Learning that Cat is trying to solve this murder, finding the child and her mother sends her right back to Granny Grace to get the answers she needs, trying to reenter the church after being sent away and hopefully learning what she missed the first time.

As the story draws to a close we find out more about Greg, his relationship with Ruthie and Sherrie, their reason for hiding from Jim and his real relationship with Larry. This book focuses on many current issues that of sexual preferences, hidden feelings, lies, betrayals, cover-ups, deceptions and moral values. As you listen to the members of the church take the Purity Pledge, learn more about Wendy and her mother finding their way back to each other in a colorful and unique way, you learn more about this cult, the members and just how they became brainwashed into believing what they are told and more.

Things spiral out of control each time Cat has another dream some become realities and others nightmares as she slips into Lee’s world on the battlefield, enters her grandmother’s thoughts, her father’s dreams and then relives them again only to finally find out more about herself. But, the ending is quite shocking as someone close to her pays the ultimate price but who and why? As the story closes and the truth behind Jim and Larry come to light and the killer is revealed but where is this person and what will the final outcome be? An ending that lets readers know that there is much more in store for Cat, dealing with the tragedy that befalls someone and how she comes to terms with it and whether she blames herself and why? Dreaming herself in Larry Price’s office, her grandmother joining her and explaining how to reach out to Ruthie in the dream and in real life, this story draws readers inside the minds of so many of the characters until the twist and surprise at the end as author Lisa Brunette takes us deep inside the world of dreams and hopefully Cat will find her way to her own salvation and not remain CAT IN THE FLOCK.

Fran Lewis: Just reviews/MJ magazine