Well! This installment is absolutely packed—maybe even a little too packed, I’d say, or maybe it’s that I had a bit of a problem with how all the plot threads tangled together. Each of them is super exciting in its own right, don’t get me wrong! On one hand, we’ve got yet another cold case, and the investigation has Rain doing one-on-one interviews with a convicted serial killers who just might be one of the creepiest examples of the type I’ve seen in fiction. On the other hand, there’s also a ghost haunting him and occasionally convinced that Rain is in fact the ghost’s former lover. the two storylines take their time to properly coalesce—too much time, if you ask me—but they both provide plenty of tension, intrigue, and suspense throughout the book.

And then of course there’s the ongoing romance (this series follows a single couple), and ouch, that one hurt. I mean, it hurt in good ways, and the

proposal

scene at the end was so sweet and made me absolutely giddy! But before that, I got to be frustrated so many times by this whole… idk, discrepancy? These guys are on completely different stages of the same relationship, and at this point I’m not sure if I trust them to get better at being on the same page (or at least finding the same page, or maybe the same chapter even) by next book. Maybe they’re just having a moment.

It made enough sense to me that Rain was still keeping secrets from Danny, and that he still kind of wanted to keep an escape route open in case things didn’t work out, and that he missed certain aspects of the FBI lifestyle. I expected these things to keep getting tackled in the series, but somehow, the specific way they were handled came as an unpleasant surprise. It’s like he didn’t really internalizes the lessons I thought he learned in the previous book. I expected him to be actually committing to making the relationship work but stumbling a lot. Instead, all the heavy load was on Danny, and Rain spent most of the book actively ignoring the fact that he’s hanging there half-ready to bolt. Things did get better over the course of the story, but… yeah, I’m remaining wary for now. 

The banter and the sarcastic remarks in Rain’s inner monologues remain one of the absolute highlights of the series for me. I found myself laughing under my breath all too often, even during scenes that were overall tense, scary, or even sad. And I also loved how the scenes with each of the guy’s parents were done. There are no on-the-nose comparisons, but plenty of fodder for drawing conclusions and understanding their backgrounds better. 

In terms of weaknesses, in addition to the already mentioned lack of balance between storylines, I don’t think the epilogue was necessary at all, and if it was, then its very last part would benefit from some editing. Because I’m not even sure what the author was going for there. A cliffhanger? A quick look at the next book’s summary and first page indicates that it’s not written with a previous cliffhanger in mind. Throwing in a bit of ambiguity just to shake things up, but we all understand what actually happens, wink wink nudge nudge? I guess maybe this was the intention, but it just… landed flat. The author just going in the middle of the page, “Oh, yay, I’ve reached my target WC, so the book ends right here?” While I’m sure that was *not* the intention, that’s… the closest to how the result feels like, sorry.