The Altar Girl by Orest Stelmach
The Altar Girl is a prequel to the Nadia Tesla series. Nadia Tesla is divorced and she has just lost her job as a financial forensics investigator in New York. She must return to her hometown, where she is now judged as an outsider by friends and family, to attend the funeral of her Ukrainian godfather.
Although her godfather’s death was determined to be an accident, Nadia isn’t buying it. After asking too many questions at the funeral, Nadia finds that she has attracted unwanted attention and ruffled more than a few feathers in the neighborhood. While working to uncover the secrets her godfather held, she must examine her relationships with both her mother and her brother as well.
After having finished the Nadia Tesla trilogy, I moved on to read this prequel which was the last book published. I’m just not sure, but I feel like having the background contained in this book would have made me like the first book a little more. The one thing I felt the first book lacked was the building of a connection between the reader and Nadia. I did wind up liking the end of the series quite well though. I also quite like it when there IS an end to a series. And it’s always nice to have a prequel, whether it was written before or after.
NOTE: As an added perk, I borrowed each of these books on my Kindle for free because I’m an Amazon Prime member.
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