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Signal in the Storm
They might have a future
If they can escape the past
Psychotherapist Ella Scarletti is burned-out. That’s why she takes a job caring for a retired TV star. LAPD detective Colin Reid is recuperating from a shooting and trying to recover his memory. Together, they’re supposed to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared during a séance twenty-five years ago. When an SUV almost kills them, it’s not clear who the target was—and they both have reasons to fear that it was them. But when Ella is abducted, Colin’s memory might be the only thing that can save her…
From Harlequin Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served.
Discover more action-packed stories in the Lighthouse Mysteries series. All books are stand-alone with uplifting endings but were published in the following
Book 1: Fugitive Harbor
Book 2: The Lightkeeper's Curse
Book 3: Signal in the Storm
If they can escape the past
Psychotherapist Ella Scarletti is burned-out. That’s why she takes a job caring for a retired TV star. LAPD detective Colin Reid is recuperating from a shooting and trying to recover his memory. Together, they’re supposed to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared during a séance twenty-five years ago. When an SUV almost kills them, it’s not clear who the target was—and they both have reasons to fear that it was them. But when Ella is abducted, Colin’s memory might be the only thing that can save her…
From Harlequin Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served.
Discover more action-packed stories in the Lighthouse Mysteries series. All books are stand-alone with uplifting endings but were published in the following
Book 1: Fugitive Harbor
Book 2: The Lightkeeper's Curse
Book 3: Signal in the Storm
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published October 28, 2025
6 people are currently reading
1 person want to read
About the author
Cassie Miles
310 books65 followersCassie grew up in a small town at the very tip of southern Illinois. A tomboy, she spent most of her time outside and got into big trouble for breaking the trellis while climbing out her second-story bedroom window.
When her family moved to L.A., major culture shock ensued. She discovered that grapefruits grew on trees, television offered more than two channels, and all the other girls had breasts. While hiding out and waiting for her chest to develop, she read voraciously, raiding her mother's bookshelf for Mickey Spillane when she finished all her Nancy Drew novels.
Another move took her family to Denver, the place Cassie still calls home.
She graduated from North Central college outside Chicago, got married, and returned to Colorado where she worked in personnel at the Denver Post and lived in a mountain cabin without running water. Upon learning she was pregnant, a return to civilization seemed prudent. She settled in Denver, raised two amazing daughters, and started writing for Harlequin. After her divorce, she took a break from romance and wrote straight suspense.
During her frantic years as a single mom, writing books and working odd jobs to supplement her income, she hardly had time to breathe, much less to dream. Then something remarkable happened. She fell in love with a tall, sexy man who was an aerial photographer and the author of tough-guy mystery novels. Fortunately, he loved her back. She found her real-life hero, inherited three more grown kids and three grandchildren.
Cassie started writing romance again, loving every minute of a life filled with laughter, crazy road trips, sailboats, and journeys to Oregon with long walks on rocky beaches.
Not too long ago, the love of her life developed inoperable pancreatic cancer. With supportive friends and family standing by, he died at home.
Cassie now lives alone, surrounded by beautiful memories. She has no regrets and considers herself lucky to have found her soul mate, the man with whom she shared a perfect love.
Pseudonym/s: Kay Bergstrom
When her family moved to L.A., major culture shock ensued. She discovered that grapefruits grew on trees, television offered more than two channels, and all the other girls had breasts. While hiding out and waiting for her chest to develop, she read voraciously, raiding her mother's bookshelf for Mickey Spillane when she finished all her Nancy Drew novels.
Another move took her family to Denver, the place Cassie still calls home.
She graduated from North Central college outside Chicago, got married, and returned to Colorado where she worked in personnel at the Denver Post and lived in a mountain cabin without running water. Upon learning she was pregnant, a return to civilization seemed prudent. She settled in Denver, raised two amazing daughters, and started writing for Harlequin. After her divorce, she took a break from romance and wrote straight suspense.
During her frantic years as a single mom, writing books and working odd jobs to supplement her income, she hardly had time to breathe, much less to dream. Then something remarkable happened. She fell in love with a tall, sexy man who was an aerial photographer and the author of tough-guy mystery novels. Fortunately, he loved her back. She found her real-life hero, inherited three more grown kids and three grandchildren.
Cassie started writing romance again, loving every minute of a life filled with laughter, crazy road trips, sailboats, and journeys to Oregon with long walks on rocky beaches.
Not too long ago, the love of her life developed inoperable pancreatic cancer. With supportive friends and family standing by, he died at home.
Cassie now lives alone, surrounded by beautiful memories. She has no regrets and considers herself lucky to have found her soul mate, the man with whom she shared a perfect love.
Pseudonym/s: Kay Bergstrom
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 14, 2026
What in world did I just read?
When the back of the book blurb from Harlequin talks about a major event which never actually happens in the story, it’s a good indication we’ve got a disaster on our hands.
But that’s the case with Signal In the Storm, where we’re directly told in the summary “when Ella is abducted, Colin’s memory might be the only thing that can save her…” Imagine my surprise when we reach the end and Ella is never abducted. Not even a light kidnapping. The only kidnapping was two kids Colin saved before the book even started.
Given the complete lack of direction, plot holes the size of a meteor crater, and characters who behave like robots trying to learn how to human, I genuinely question whether this book was touched by an editor before it was published.
Summary
_____
Our heroine, Ella Scarletti, is a “burned out” psychoanalyst (not a psychotherapist like the cover says). She’s taken on a job working as a factotum to a retired TV detective and living in his coastal Oregon home. If you’re thinking that it takes around a decade to become a psychoanalyst, so for her to be “burned out” she’d need to reasonably be in her 40s or 50s, you’d be mistaken. She’s 27. That must have been a rough two weeks on the job? Granted, her dialogue puts her in her 70s, so we’re all over the place with this characterization.
Colin Reid, our hero, is really in a professional pickle too. Mostly because he’s terrifyingly bad at his job if he is, in fact, an LAPD detective. We’re talking stick evidence for a possible 25 year old murder into his coat pocket to take with him for some reading later. But that’s not Colin’s only problem. At some point before Page 1, Colin was badly injured saving some kids from a kidnapping and he developed *extremely selective amnesia*. You know the kind, where he only forgets or remembers things as needed for The Plot. He also has some kink for lighthouses, night time walks on the beach, and a particularly calming Sea Cave (not a euphemism, or maybe, who knows).
Ella’s TV detective boss’s ex-wife disappeared 25 years ago and he’s decided now that there’s an LAPD detective limping along the beach he’s going to hire the guy to find out where she’s gone. Hi-jinx ensues.
Examples of hi-jinx:
- Ella is adopted and there’s reveals of birth mothers who turn out to not be birth mothers but actually are birth mothers
- There is a former nun turned realtor who talks like she’s straight out of the start of The Sound of Music and calls the FMC “my child” after every interaction, in spite of it turning out this woman is not, in fact, one of the mother options and Ella is not her child. I’m now considering if this is a red herring.
- There is a bio dad reveal which turns out to not be the correct reveal, but the bio dad reveal is coming. This will be a shock if you failed to see the clues which were so obvious you could see them from space.
- At one point, Ella is concerned Colin might be her brother or cousin, so she makes a joke about making out with her “brother from another mother”. This is Oregon folks, not the Deep South.
- There is a hitman named “THE BEAV”
- Yes, I know you think I’m joking about that last bullet point. I’m not.
- Colin and Ella want to hook up with each other, and their internal dialogue reads like a couple of middle schoolers making up sexy stories for their action figures, including being really into “kissing…with tongue!”
- Colin takes Ella on a walk that with anyone else would be a straight to murder situation, but instead he wants to show her his “happy place” which is a sea cave. He kisses her, with tongue of course, in said sea cave but then stops it there because he’s not sure whether she’s sea cave worthy, we presume.
- The sea cave will come back up later in one of the most bananas paragraphs I’ve ever read.
- Colin decides to recuperate from his selective amnesia injury in the home of his rich senator uncle. A man he apparently hates, and his uncle appears to hate him back, but also trusts him enough to invite him into his home. And Collin is comfortable there when he’s in a vulnerable state but also conveniently uncomfortable when it serves The Plot.
- If the secondary character, the TV detective guy, behaved like a real human being this book can’t exist in this form. He has a secret that makes zero sense to keep except that he was busy being an actor for a season and couldn’t be arsed to have a 5 min conversation with a few different people and solve the disappearance of his supposed great love. If this paragraph reads as nonsense then you are getting the story line correct.
- In spite of the cover saying Ella is kidnapped, she isn’t. There’s a moment when she’s in a lighthouse with a bad guy, but there’s no abduction.
- In spite of being in a series called the “Lighthouse Mysteries” this lighthouse is totally irrelevant.
- There’s some ghost stuff.
- After suffering through these two adults talking about hooking up, we are rewarded by a couple of paragraphs of the least sensual interactions in the history of Harlequin Intrigue and a fade to black situation. At least nobody is satisfied on page, including the reader.
- I could list 30 more things about this book which are mind-blowingly bad.
When I reach the conclusion of a Romantic Suspense novel, I expect two things: A believable happily ever after and a sensible resolution to the conflict and mystery.
So imagine my surprise when I got to the end and genuinely had to wonder if 20 pages of this book were missing when it went to print. Nothing leads me to believe these two people are meant to be a couple and the mystery literally makes no sense. The clues contradict the conclusion to such an extent the ending is basically impossible.
Also of note: This wasn’t an ARC read. I paid real cash to WalMart for this unsatisfying mess. Given that I read a lot of categories, I know this is not indicative of the publisher or the line. But I do question what in the world happened that this book appeared untouched by the hands of an editor.
One positive: I wasn’t bored. Just very confused.
———
Harlequin Intrigue (Nov 2025)
Genre/Subgenre: romantic suspense, category romance
Standalone/Series: standalone, but technically in a series with lighthouses in them
Themes/Tropes: cop in recovery from injury, solving a decades old mystery, burnt out therapist, celeb side character
Steam/Spice Level: closed door, fade to black, super low on the spicy scale, one tiny scene over a few paragraphs at the very end is basically it
Setting: Oregon Coast
BIPOC Characters: no
LGBTQ+ Characters: maybe? Maybe the former nun realtor is coded as a gay woman?
Religion: there’s some quirky seance, ghost stuff but it’s fine
POV: third person, past tense, dual POV
Cops/LEO: yes, the MMC is a LAPD cop on medical leave after a work related injury and amnesia
Character Ages: FMC: 27 MMC: ?
Does the Dog/Horse/Cat Die? N/A
__________
When the back of the book blurb from Harlequin talks about a major event which never actually happens in the story, it’s a good indication we’ve got a disaster on our hands.
But that’s the case with Signal In the Storm, where we’re directly told in the summary “when Ella is abducted, Colin’s memory might be the only thing that can save her…” Imagine my surprise when we reach the end and Ella is never abducted. Not even a light kidnapping. The only kidnapping was two kids Colin saved before the book even started.
Given the complete lack of direction, plot holes the size of a meteor crater, and characters who behave like robots trying to learn how to human, I genuinely question whether this book was touched by an editor before it was published.
Summary
_____
Our heroine, Ella Scarletti, is a “burned out” psychoanalyst (not a psychotherapist like the cover says). She’s taken on a job working as a factotum to a retired TV detective and living in his coastal Oregon home. If you’re thinking that it takes around a decade to become a psychoanalyst, so for her to be “burned out” she’d need to reasonably be in her 40s or 50s, you’d be mistaken. She’s 27. That must have been a rough two weeks on the job? Granted, her dialogue puts her in her 70s, so we’re all over the place with this characterization.
Colin Reid, our hero, is really in a professional pickle too. Mostly because he’s terrifyingly bad at his job if he is, in fact, an LAPD detective. We’re talking stick evidence for a possible 25 year old murder into his coat pocket to take with him for some reading later. But that’s not Colin’s only problem. At some point before Page 1, Colin was badly injured saving some kids from a kidnapping and he developed *extremely selective amnesia*. You know the kind, where he only forgets or remembers things as needed for The Plot. He also has some kink for lighthouses, night time walks on the beach, and a particularly calming Sea Cave (not a euphemism, or maybe, who knows).
Ella’s TV detective boss’s ex-wife disappeared 25 years ago and he’s decided now that there’s an LAPD detective limping along the beach he’s going to hire the guy to find out where she’s gone. Hi-jinx ensues.
Examples of hi-jinx:
- Ella is adopted and there’s reveals of birth mothers who turn out to not be birth mothers but actually are birth mothers
- There is a former nun turned realtor who talks like she’s straight out of the start of The Sound of Music and calls the FMC “my child” after every interaction, in spite of it turning out this woman is not, in fact, one of the mother options and Ella is not her child. I’m now considering if this is a red herring.
- There is a bio dad reveal which turns out to not be the correct reveal, but the bio dad reveal is coming. This will be a shock if you failed to see the clues which were so obvious you could see them from space.
- At one point, Ella is concerned Colin might be her brother or cousin, so she makes a joke about making out with her “brother from another mother”. This is Oregon folks, not the Deep South.
- There is a hitman named “THE BEAV”
- Yes, I know you think I’m joking about that last bullet point. I’m not.
- Colin and Ella want to hook up with each other, and their internal dialogue reads like a couple of middle schoolers making up sexy stories for their action figures, including being really into “kissing…with tongue!”
- Colin takes Ella on a walk that with anyone else would be a straight to murder situation, but instead he wants to show her his “happy place” which is a sea cave. He kisses her, with tongue of course, in said sea cave but then stops it there because he’s not sure whether she’s sea cave worthy, we presume.
- The sea cave will come back up later in one of the most bananas paragraphs I’ve ever read.
- Colin decides to recuperate from his selective amnesia injury in the home of his rich senator uncle. A man he apparently hates, and his uncle appears to hate him back, but also trusts him enough to invite him into his home. And Collin is comfortable there when he’s in a vulnerable state but also conveniently uncomfortable when it serves The Plot.
- If the secondary character, the TV detective guy, behaved like a real human being this book can’t exist in this form. He has a secret that makes zero sense to keep except that he was busy being an actor for a season and couldn’t be arsed to have a 5 min conversation with a few different people and solve the disappearance of his supposed great love. If this paragraph reads as nonsense then you are getting the story line correct.
- In spite of the cover saying Ella is kidnapped, she isn’t. There’s a moment when she’s in a lighthouse with a bad guy, but there’s no abduction.
- In spite of being in a series called the “Lighthouse Mysteries” this lighthouse is totally irrelevant.
- There’s some ghost stuff.
- After suffering through these two adults talking about hooking up, we are rewarded by a couple of paragraphs of the least sensual interactions in the history of Harlequin Intrigue and a fade to black situation. At least nobody is satisfied on page, including the reader.
- I could list 30 more things about this book which are mind-blowingly bad.
When I reach the conclusion of a Romantic Suspense novel, I expect two things: A believable happily ever after and a sensible resolution to the conflict and mystery.
So imagine my surprise when I got to the end and genuinely had to wonder if 20 pages of this book were missing when it went to print. Nothing leads me to believe these two people are meant to be a couple and the mystery literally makes no sense. The clues contradict the conclusion to such an extent the ending is basically impossible.
Also of note: This wasn’t an ARC read. I paid real cash to WalMart for this unsatisfying mess. Given that I read a lot of categories, I know this is not indicative of the publisher or the line. But I do question what in the world happened that this book appeared untouched by the hands of an editor.
One positive: I wasn’t bored. Just very confused.
———
Harlequin Intrigue (Nov 2025)
Genre/Subgenre: romantic suspense, category romance
Standalone/Series: standalone, but technically in a series with lighthouses in them
Themes/Tropes: cop in recovery from injury, solving a decades old mystery, burnt out therapist, celeb side character
Steam/Spice Level: closed door, fade to black, super low on the spicy scale, one tiny scene over a few paragraphs at the very end is basically it
Setting: Oregon Coast
BIPOC Characters: no
LGBTQ+ Characters: maybe? Maybe the former nun realtor is coded as a gay woman?
Religion: there’s some quirky seance, ghost stuff but it’s fine
POV: third person, past tense, dual POV
Cops/LEO: yes, the MMC is a LAPD cop on medical leave after a work related injury and amnesia
Character Ages: FMC: 27 MMC: ?
Does the Dog/Horse/Cat Die? N/A
__________
Read
October 2, 2025Romantic Suspense, Police Procedural Mystery & Detective, Crime Thriller
Miniseries
Lighthouse Mysteries (Book #3)
Miniseries
Lighthouse Mysteries (Book #3)
Read
October 2, 2025Romantic Suspense, Police Procedural Mystery & Detective, Crime Thriller
Miniseries
Lighthouse Mysteries (Book #3)
Miniseries
Lighthouse Mysteries (Book #3)
November 4, 2025
A thoroughly enjoyable read
November 21, 2025
While this was light on romance,the mystery was interesting. I did figure out parts of it but I still enjoyed the book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews