3.5 stars.

Another solid and suspenseful crime thriller that Slaughter has thrown over the top! Once again, I was glued to the story and found myself reading for hours at a stretch without any sense of time! Truly very compelling. But that is also why she is the queen of  thrillers (wink wink).

The story was again a complex woven web which is always a big plus for me. Only I found that the story felt very much like a mixture between the first book (blindsighted) and the second book (kisscut). The predominant themes covered in these first books, such as Christian faith and family problems, resurfaced which I really regretted. I had expected a bit more originality, especially for the 5th book in the series. There were also a lot of characters in the story that were generally irrelevant at times. This made that the story could come across as rather complicated at times. I have now read it in 2 days, but I am sure that if it had taken me 7 days I would have completely forgotten all the characters' significance. The tension I normally feel throughout her stories was also rather lacking. Only the penultimate chapter was at the level I am used to from KS.

For the character development part, there were also rough bits missing. I had expected much more development in the relationship of Lena and Ethan as well as Jeffrey and Sarah (obviously).

Overall, not a bad book, but it certainly wasn't my  favourite from the series. Only 1 more book to go... wow.