I liked the fact that it was clear the characters had lives before the book, but I don't like how forced the backstories were and the Byrne subplot did not make me like him at all. I also hate the fact that one of the people had to die. It was interesting, but by the end I wanted to scream at Jessica for leaving Sophie alone in the house. Seriously - if there are problems at home, take her over to this babysitter that you keep praising for being able to watch Sophie at the drop of a hat!

A dark story but you couldn’t really guess who the culprit was until the end when the suicides were revealed. I like stories where I am familiar with the killer all along and just don’t realize it.

amazing amazing book, slight let down at the ending for me though :(

I am a little surprised to see that this book had so many high reviews, having read it now. I don't mean this to say that the book was bad; it wasn't bad, really. It was just kind of... meh. This book was recommended to me by someone, and I was a little skeptical reading the description, but figured I'd give it a try.

Mostly, in my opinion, the book is cliched. It uses a lot of the same tropes that your average suspense novel does, and I was able to mostly guess what would happen throughout the book. It wasn't unpredictable in any way.

For example, it was fairly obvious -- to me -- that Jessica and Sophia would be targeted by the killer by the end of the novel right from the beginning; with Jessica repeatedly talking about how precious Sophie was to her, it was like well, we know what's going to happen now.

It was also noticeable that the author tries to keep you guessing, dropping hints making you think you know who the killer is and then evaporating those clues to send you onto a different trail. This wasn't terrible necessarily, but it was, again, predictable.

You know that when they're first fingering Brian Parkhurst that it can't possibly be him, despite all the evidence, because we're still only in the first third of the book! Had it actually been Parkhurst, that would have taken the novel in a unique direction, but no. It was one of multiple red herrings to come.

I was fairly sure that I knew who the killer was, and I thought I had it right. It was clear that it was someone with some kind of connection to Jessica, someone with medical knowledge, and someone that the characters would almost immediately trust. But I ended up being wrong... except I don't feel like I was.

You're led to believe towards the end that the killer is Patrick Farrell, an ER physician who has dated Jessica and is romantically interested in her. EVERYTHING fit -- right down to having a scratch on his hand that we KNOW was inflicted by one of the killer's would-be victims who escaped. He had the car, he had the connection to Jessica, he had the connection to all of the victims. He lied about knowing the victims, he lied in his police interview, and so on. But then it turns out to be some rando dude at the last second, and there's no explanation of how, suddenly, all the evidence against Patrick is meaningless because it's ACTUALLY this guy. Like, you know, the scratch on Patrick's hand. It would have made sense to me had they been, perhaps, partners in the crime spree.

No, it was just a "gotcha!" moment that fell flat to me, because it seems that's exactly what the author was going for: making readers think they know who the killer is only to yank the rug out from underneath them. I actually would have loved that, had the author not framed the evidence the way he had, or put more time into explaining the scenario as opposed to "haha, nope, it's actually this rando guy!", but that wasn't what happened, and it was disappointing.

I was also bothered by the entire plotline, really, revolving around Catholicism. It was described strangely, with people who are Catholics -- like Jessica -- having to research and explain what the rosary is. Which, I get it, it's for non-Catholic readers, you have to put in some kind of explanation. But I'm sitting there going, even a non-practicing Catholic is going to know what the rosary is. They may not remember the specific mysteries, they may need to look up the specifics, but no Catholic is going to be mystified and have to do research into what a rosary is. And there was no real positive portrayal of Catholicism to offset the horrible nature of the crimes, either. I felt very uncomfortable, ultimately, by the end, and not because of the "ooh terrible crimes in a murder story" plot.

The one good thing that I really, really appreciated was that there was no romance between Kevin and Jessica. That was refreshing; the two seem to like and respect each other, but usually, you put a male and female character together, and they fall in loooooove. Not this time (although maybe the author goes for this trope in follow-up novels, who knows). And that was a breath of fresh air.

So, I don't know how highly I would recommend this book? It wasn't BAD. But it wasn't really great, either. It's an easy read; I got through it in just a few days, and I certainly wanted to find out who the killer was, so I guess that's a positive going for it. I haven't decided yet if I'll check out the next books in the series or not, though.

Too many attempts at flowery writing to keep my interest.

Great Suspense thriller. I thought I knew who it was and then a curve ball (that doesn't happen often). The characters were amazing, I loved Kevin and Jessica. I loved that they weren't cookie cuter characters. The pace of the book was progressive without being boring. How everything came together was just great. I will definitely be continuing this series.

I enjoyed this start to a new thriller series. Good characters, a fast paced plot and some truly gory murders. There were some chilling moments that almost pushes this into the Horror genre.

However, I was disappointed by the conclusion

that typical thing where the murderer ends up being such a minor character that the reader has no chance of solving the mystery. It really takes the fun away. In this case, the detectives don't even solve the murder and wouldn't have if the murder hadn't gone after one of them.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by the always fantastic Scott Brick. I'll even forgive him for clearly doing no research into what a Norfolk accent sounds like!

I'll probably continue the series at some point but I'm not in a particular rush.

Demasiado libro dedicado a los problemas de Kevin y Jessica, ritmo muy lento y lenguaje y trato muy antiguo y ofensivo para esta época.