🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3.4/5 | Steam: 🔥 | Book 4 in the Frankie Elkin Series
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Kiss Her Goodbye yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Okay, so. I want to start by saying I love Frankie Elkins. I love this series. And I will see it through to the end no matter what, because Frankie has earned that from me. But this book? This book had me confused for a solid stretch and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
Kiss Her Goodbye opens with Frankie landing what has to be the most unusual house-sitting gig of all time — a massive estate compound handed over to her by a wealthy man named Bart who barely says two sentences before he’s gone for a month. Fine. Eccentric. But then Frankie discovers there is a four-to-five-foot lizard named Petunia AND a giant python named Marge living on this property, and honestly? I was immediately invested in the chaos.
The case itself — finding a missing woman named Sabara — took me a while to get my footing in. Not because the story isn’t interesting, because it is. But this book doles out its information in small pieces, across jumping timelines, through flashbacks that don’t click into place until much later, with a riddle that seems to repeat endlessly without resolution. I spent a significant chunk of this book saying “okay but WHAT is going on” and just hoping we’d eventually get there.
We do get there. But the journey was bumpy.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
Frankie’s Very Unusual Situation
Before the case even properly begins, Frankie is already living in the absurd. Bart’s driver Darryl has a criminal record — reformed, five years of probation fully behind him — and he ends up being one of the best things about this whole book. Darryl gets so genuinely invested in Sabara’s case. He’s helping source mattresses for a family, he’s narrowing down locations, he’s all the way in. I loved him.
And then Marge the python escapes, and Bart responds by furnishing an entire settlement apartment as his apology. That’s just the kind of man Bart is.
Oliya Asks Frankie for Help
Oliya contacts Frankie. This woman comes to her because her friend Sabara has gone missing and nobody has done a single thing about it. This is how Frankie operates — she finds the people who fall through the cracks.
The problem is that Sabara’s situation is layered in ways that take the entire book to fully understand. Her family was torn apart by violence back in their home country. Her brother Fasheed was killed by gunfire. Her father, a university teacher — gunfire. Her uncles too. Her mother was a seamstress on the surface but was secretly a spy for MI6, passing messages. Before she died of illness, she left Sabara three things to know: don’t trust the uncles, something happened at the market, and only Sabara can clean out the sewing room.
Sabara herself is a translator and code breaker who worked for the US military. Language skills run in the family.
Her husband Isad is not the biological father of her daughter Zahera — he married Sabara to protect her after the real father was killed. So when Isad receives a mysterious package, drops Zahera off with a neighbor ten minutes later, and then disappears — only to turn up dead, fingers burned, face untouched — and someone uses his phone to call Oliya after he is already dead… there is a lot going on.
Then Sabara’s face shows up on the news. Her headscarf, one Oliya had given her, was found covered in blood after a brutal double murder scene. Two men, skulls caved in with a hammer. Video of Sabara walking away from the scene. A man showed up at her building trying to take Zahera to “her mom.” There is a lot of thread to pull.
The Refugee Camp Flashbacks
Here is where I started struggling, because these flashbacks come in small pieces spread throughout the book, and for a long time they don’t connect cleanly to what’s happening in the present. They felt random when they first appeared. Disconnected.
Here’s what we eventually understand: at the refugee camp, cholera is ripping through and Sabara is working in the infirmary translating. She spots someone who looks exactly like her dead brother Fasheed. It’s not Fasheed. It’s her cousin Habib — who looks like Fasheed but is his complete opposite. Hotheaded. Dangerous. Habib gets right in her face: “If I found you, they will too. Where is it?”
Sabara holds her hand over his mouth and kills him. Her water breaks immediately after. That is how Zahera comes into the world.
Finding Sabara
Darryl and Frankie work the possibilities. They think Sabara might be hiding at the resort hotel where she works. They find the unit — missing light bulb, which is her hiding technique — and the wall is covered floor to ceiling in script and mathematical equations. She was there. She’s already gone. Blood-soaked clothing left behind.
Two men from an organization called No One Left Behind show up. Sabara had reached out because her mother was a translator and Sabara herself is a code breaker — she wanted contact with her mother’s handler. Frankie wants to know too. They offer Frankie the same deal they offered Sabara: give us your contact information, and if she’s interested, she’ll reach out.
A riddle keeps surfacing throughout the book: “two halves of one whole, a lock without a key.” It turns out the lock is a lock of hair from Sabara — and Zahera is the key. It was inside the package Isad received.
Darryl figures out the next step: bring Zahera and Oliya to the safety of Bart’s compound. Set up a coded message in Oliya’s storefront window. Plan to meet Sabara at Darryl’s dance studio.
Then a manila envelope arrives from No One Left Behind — it’s a response from the MI6 handler. Paperwork about Sabara’s 72-hour psych hold. And the detail that Sabara is pregnant again.
The Magic Squares
Zahera keeps creating them. Two magic squares, then three. “Two halves of one whole.” This phrase repeats throughout the entire book and for most of it I could not figure out what it was supposed to mean or why it kept coming up. It drove me a little crazy, honestly.
Here is the answer that eventually comes: Sabara was given longitude to multiple locations. Fasheed was given latitude. But not one person has both — meaning the code only works when you put them together. That is what Sabara figured out.
Oliya Gets Taken
Right in front of Frankie, Oliya is kidnapped. Frankie recognizes one of the kidnappers immediately — she saw him the day before, browsing candy in Oliya’s store. They had already been watching.
Going through Oliya’s emails, they piece together that Jamil — Zahera’s biological father — was Oliya’s second cousin. He called her auntie. He had been emailing her: met the woman of his dreams (Sabara), they broke up because she was using him, then got back together when he understood she had her reasons. They were on the same side of the revolution. He sent Oliya Sabara’s name and photo with instructions: if the worst happens, get her off the streets. The Taliban cannot get their hands on her. Do not trust her family.
During Sabara’s mental breakdown — the one that resulted in the psych hold — she just kept repeating “Jamil, Jamil.” And Zahera’s middle name is Jamil La.
Then a gun enters the room.
Lila and the Gold
The person at the door is Lila — the MI6 agent they have been trying to reach this whole time. She pretends she doesn’t know them, but she absolutely does. She’s been following Darryl and Frankie for days. She says she already found Sabara at the resort.
And here is the actual heart of what this whole book is about.
Sabara’s mother had been quietly investigating something: exhausted mines — mines with no active resources left — being purchased by politicians. She couldn’t figure out why you would buy a worthless mine. When Sabara found the coordinates buried in her mother’s work, she enlisted Jamil, a geology student, to help locate the sites. The first site they found? Exhausted of minerals. But filled with bars and bars of gold. Politicians and pillagers had been using dead mines as secret vaults — hiding their gold where no one would ever think to look. Sabara wiped out all the coordinates. She took everything.
That’s her leverage. And what she wants in exchange? She wants the MI6 agent to extract her brother Fasheed, because Sabara is absolutely certain he is still alive.
Why? Because she is not seeing his ghost in her hallucinations. She’s been seeing other ghosts throughout the book — people who aren’t there — but Fasheed is never among them. If he were dead, she’d see him. She is convinced of that.
Lila says there is no way Fasheed could have survived four years. And then she adds: “I would have sworn she was wrong, except yesterday I saw someone kidnapping Oliya who looked identical to Fasheed. Except rougher.”
And then Frankie and Darryl clock it: what kind of MI6 spy talks this much? The whole point of Lila showing up and dumping all of this might be to discredit Sabara — make everyone think she’s unstable, between the pregnancy and the grief and the paranoia, so that even if they find her, no one believes a word she says.
The Compound Showdown
They hatch a plan to lure the bad guys to Bart’s estate by making them think Sabara is there. Booby traps are set, using Petunia the lizard and Marge the python — which is honestly the most chaotic and perfect thing. And the plan immediately goes sideways because when they get into the car with someone pretending to be Sabara, the real Sabara is already in the car wanting to know what they’ve done with her daughter.
Sabara tells them: Habib wasn’t actually dead. She thought she killed him in the refugee camp but she hadn’t.
She never saw Rafik and his men coming. Rafik was furious at Sabara because his child died in the refugee camp while hers survived, and he offered her up to the Taliban because she knew where the gold was hidden. During a time of great sickness she had babbled about the gold and Rafik and his family were her tent mates.
Frankie doesn’t fully buy the story. Sabara is too clean for someone who’s been on the run. The hammer murders still don’t add up. Something isn’t right.
Most of the bad guys are caught in the traps. Habib makes it all the way to the kitchen with Oliya — bound and gagged — in tow. It comes out that Habib was the one who killed the two men at the original scene. Sabara kills Habib.
Then Darryl takes a bullet from one of Habib’s men. They fight it out. They win.
The Lila Problem
Lila shows up after everything is over. Asks about Zahera’s location. Frankie notes it and moves on. Lila asks again. Frankie finds that very strange.
Sabara collapses, and dies suddenly. Everyone looks to Lila.
And Lila says: “Nobody saw me do anything. I didn’t do anything, no one would ever believe you either.”
Frankie asks her why. Lila says they were never going to stop looking for Sabara. Frankie says: “She was pregnant. You killed both of them.” Lila says, “Don’t believe everything you read,” and walks out.
Frankie plays it back. Lila asked about Zahera twice. Frankie figures no one will look for Zahera at her own apartment, so Frankie takes her home, gets her settled in bed, and sits down on the couch.
Then Lila walks back in. With Sabara. And Sabara’s doctor friend.
Sabara is not dead. The death was staged — so they would stop hunting her.
The End
Darryl is in the hospital. He recovers. They have a little celebration back at Bart’s compound, which is genuinely sweet, and a very fitting ending for a character who gave so much to this case. Frankie is just about to leave when she gets a call from Vaughn from Book 3.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥 / 5 — This is a Frankie Elkins book. There is zero steam and zero romance. That is not what this series is. If you want that, you need a different series entirely. What you’re going to get here is a thriller with international stakes, a protagonist who refuses to give up on missing women, and a whole lot of complexity. Completely clean. Not even a hint of romance.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
The ending worked for me more than a lot of the middle did. Sabara being alive — the death being staged to get the threat off her back — was a solid payoff for everything that had been building. Darryl recovering and getting his little celebration was a sweet, earned moment. And the call from Vaughn sets something up for a Book 5 that has me genuinely curious about where Frankie goes next, if there even is a Book 5.
I just wish getting there hadn’t felt like quite as much of a slog.
Would I Reread It?
No. This is a one-and-done for me. Between the fragmented flashbacks, the timelines that take forever to click, and the magic squares mystery that circles the drain before it resolves — I wouldn’t want to sit through that again. But I will absolutely keep reading this series if there is more to come.
Who Is This For
This one is for people who are already in the Frankie Elkins series and are in it for the long haul. If you’ve read Books 1 through 3, you’re not going to walk away over this one. It’s also for readers who like their thrillers with a lot of layers — espionage, international conspiracy, MI6, hidden gold, refugee crises, and complex webs of family loyalty and betrayal. If you want something fast and clean, this may not be it. But if you love Frankie and you want to see where she goes next, it’s worth it.
If you are thinking about starting the series, do not start here. Go back to Book 1.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible US | Audible CA | Libro.fm
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📚 More from the Frankie Elkins Series
- Book 1 — Before She Disappeared | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.3/5 | Steam: 🔥
- Book 2 — One Step Too Far | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.6/5 | Steam: 🔥
- Book 3 — Still See You Everywhere | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.2/5 | Steam: 🔥
- Book 4 — Kiss Her Goodbye | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 3.4/5 | Steam: 🔥 — You’re here!
- Full Series Review — Is the Frankie Elkins Series Worth Reading? — 4 ⭐
Ready for more from LD? Find them here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Series: Frankie Elkins Book 4 | Genre: Thriller | Steam: 🔥