Book Details:
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher (Thomas Allen & Sons)
Read: August 2017
Synopsis:
He surfaced two years ago. Then he disappeared …
But Detective Angie Pallorino never forgot the violent rapist who left a distinctive calling card—crosses etched into the flesh of his victim’s foreheads.
When a comatose Jane Doe is found in a local cemetery, sexually assaulted, mutilated, and nearly drowned, Angie is struck by the eerie similarities to her earlier unsolved rapes. Could he be back?
Then the body of a drowned young woman floats up in the Gorge, also bearing the marks of the serial rapist, and the hunt for a predator becomes a hunt for a killer. Assigned to the joint investigative task force, Angie is more than ready to prove that she has what it takes to break into the all-male homicide division. But her private life collides with her professional ambitions when she’s introduced to her temporary partner, James Maddocks—a man she’d met the night before in an intense, anonymous encounter.
Together, Angie and Maddocks agree to put that night behind them. But as their search for the killer intensifies so does their mutual desire. And Angie’s forays into the mind of a monster shake lose some unsettling secrets about her own past . . .
How can she fight for the truth when it turns out her whole life is a lie?
My ThoughtsThank you to Thomas Allen & Sons for a copy of this book!
Whether it’s a review book I pick, or an unsolicited review book, or a book someone gave to me, or a book curated through a book box, I feel like there’s always this feeling I have that I’m NOT going to like the book. I don’t know what the difference is between this and if I buy the book myself in a store, but there’s always this weird bias in my head when I start reading any of these books.
However, a lot of the time I’m pleasantly surprised and such was the case with Loreth Anne White’s book, The Drowned Girls. My book blogging friend Ambur sent me a copy, thinking I’d like it, and immediately I was drawn into the gorgeous cover and the heft of the book. It’s just over 500 pages and I was in the mood for a good mystery that would pull me in and have me hooked. And this book had me so hooked!
As I read the story about Detective Angie Pallorino and her search for the person who is killing the young “drowned” girls, I immediately felt like I was reading a mystery a la Kelly Armstrong or the like. Angie was an awesome character. She was tough, resilient, sexual, and just such a great female lead. I loved that along with the mystery of the story, she also had a mystery of her own she had to solve. I instantly loved her and pretty much 100 pages in I had to see when the next book in the series would be out because I was for sure adding it to my reading list.
I also love that there’s ROMANCE in this book – I have a soft spot for romance in any genre of book, but I do love mysteries where two people fall in love. It’s not usually a sweet kind of love that you’d find in your usual romance book, but it’s intense, sometimes forbidden, and there’s usually a reason why these two people can’t be together. I loved the romantic lead and also that the romance wasn’t first and foremost in the story. First we have the mystery of the main story, then the mystery of Angie’s past, and then the romance. It’s hot and heavy, but not too hot and heavy to be deemed erotic, but just right for a book like this.
Honestly, I finished this book so interested in reading more of the author’s work, I loved it that much. And I have The Lullaby Girl already on my wishlist – it comes out in November and hopefully we get more of Angie’s story as well as a solid mystery!
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