When single mother Alison Nolan sets off with her six-year-old daughter, Hazel, she can’t wait to spend precious time with her girl. A vacation in Silent Lake, where snow-topped mountains are surrounded by the colors of fall, is just what they need. But hours later, Alison and Hazel vanish into thin air.

Detective Kay Sharp rushes to the scene. The only evidence that they were ever there is an abandoned rental car with a suitcase in the back, gummy bears in the open glove compartment and a teddy bear on the floor.

Kay’s mind spins. A week before, the body of another woman from out of town was found wrapped in a blanket, her hair braided and tied with feathers. Instinct tells her that the cases are connected––and it won’t be long until more innocent lives are lost.

As Kay leads a frenzied search, time is against her, but she vows that Alison and little Hazel will be found alive. She works around the clock, even though the small town is up in arms, saying she’s asking too many questions. Then she uncovers a vital clue – a photograph of the blanket that the first victim was buried in.

Just when Kay thinks she’s found the missing piece, she realises she’s being watched. Is she getting too close, or is her own past catching up with her?

With a little girl’s life on the line, Kay will stop at nothing. But will it be enough to get inside the mind of the most twisted killer she has ever encountered, or will another blameless child be taken?

57 Chapters | 355 pages | 6hrs Over 2 Days

I must have read a third of this book and then completely forgotten about it. I decided to read this when I was babysitting my nephew which is when I realised, I’d already started it. June has been pants for reading and I wasn’t sure I’d even get back into this book.

This book I read on Kindle, and it has a lot of chapters for not a lot of pages. As the reader we get chapter P.O.V.s from Kay, Elliot, and the killer. Honestly, the killer P.O.V chapters were sometimes too detailed to sit comfortably. Sometimes I worry about the author who writes the killer P.O.Vs! I think the killer chapters just sort of twisted in a way that made my stomach churn.

Kay is on leave from the FBI and returns home to look after the family home while her brother Jacob resides in prison. She becomes involved with the Sheriff and Detective Elliot and the case that quickly evolves from one murder to a confirmed serial killer.

With this book, I knew who the killer was from 35% of reading. I talk a lot about my dislike for being able to accurately guess a killer early on in a book. I was a little disappointed to have worked it out so quickly, however, there was still enough to keep me interested as the case, as much as it is about murder, also links to Kay’s past. So, in that respect it was rather compelling.

The town, whose name I have already forgotten, is, you guessed it, a “small town”. Honestly, crime books are a walking advertisement on why you should never live in a small town!! Kay worked with the Sheriff’s department and is paired up with Detective Elliot.

In my mind Elliot constantly shifted in description. For most of the book he presented as a dark-skinned man with a warming smile. But towards the end he started to shift into a white man with a Texan attitude. It kept switching and I couldn’t decide which version I liked better.

The plot was complex in that the killer was driven in ways that deviated from what you would expect. Discovering the killer storyline made me both curious and also unnerved. There were elements of this storyline that had the potential to tip over and push past the line of acceptance, but they were handled incredibly well by the author and pushed enough to fit in the storyline but not too far as to make you feel nauseous while reading.

There is, I think, a lot to Kay that we didn’t see in this book, even with her being involved in the past of the killer. There are 5 books in this series – so far – and they are styled as the “Detective Kay Sharp” series, however, in this book Kay is not a Detective, she’s not FBI, she is simply “Dr Kay Sharp”.

While we, as the reader, get comfortable with Kay’s intrinsic way of thinking and the clear aptitude she has for creating unsub profiles and analysing a crime scene, I feel sure that much of her personality wasn’t shown to its full extent in this book. I think it will be explored as the series continues, but I got more of a sense of her ‘work personality’, how she strives for the truth, how determined she is to get the job done, and how reckless she can be while pursuing a case.

I did get a glimpse of her character which was explored as she revisited her past, but it was revisited in the context of how it tied with the killer, so I felt like I was getting a ‘tunnel-vision view of her’, rather than the whole package. It’s not a bad thing per say, it is just something I know will be explored as the series continues.

The weather in the UK is hot right now and us Brits have never been particularly good with dealing with the heat. When I’m in my flat, I keep my blackout curtains drawn to keep the rooms cool, and reading through the heat is one of my favourite pastimes because it doesn’t take a lot of effort, I stay cool, and the end result is rewarding. I read this book over two evenings and it really helped to calm me down from the heat and transport me to an alternate reality.

I think there could be something between Kay and Elliot. There was certainly mentions of attraction within this book. I’m sort of on the fence about main character romance in crime books. When it’s done well it’s explosive but there also seems to be a tendency of ‘drawing out’ the romance and I generally find that irritating. There is potential though, so I shall keep my eyes open.

The ending came as I expected. I don’t think there was another way it could go with the characters as they are. Part of my knowledge of the ending came from guessing the killer from early on and part of it came from observing how Kay acted through the crime case. While it was a disappointment to know how it would end, it was still exciting to read. It was a fast-paced adrenaline ending and I do, though I write otherwise, enjoy those.

Despite my disappointment in knowing the ending and revealing the killer, I do find myself invested in the characters and wanting to read the next book in the series.

The book has 4.5 stars on Amazon (9,962 reviews) and you can get it on Kindle Unlimited or buy it for £1.99.

I give this book: ⭐⭐⭐⭐