Special Agent Kate Coppola has recently moved to Cincinnati. She says she's chasing a promotion but she's actually running away from heartache. She's found the recordings from Decker's time undercover and has been at his side in the hospital while she tries to put together the pieces of the crime he was investigating—and what connection it has to his own mysterious past.
When someone tries to kill Decker in his hospital bed, he and Kate realise that the children are not the only ones whose lives are threatened, and that they must stop at nothing to hunt down the perpetrators. And danger is waiting in every dark corner.
Comment: Another Karen Rose book. Since I read the first book by her, years ago, I have tried to keep up with her releases because I know her books are always gripping.
However, the latest books have also started to focus more on what I dislike the most in her books, so... feeling a bit confused about what to feel.
This book starts right after the end of the previous one and the main couple is Kate and Decker, characters we got to see right at the end of that book.
Kate has come to Cincinnati mainly because her former partner Deacon is here now and she wants to be around friends after what happened with her brother-in-law, who committed suicide.
Decker is an FBI agent who has been undercover and when the last book ended, his cover was unmasked and he was hurt and has been in a coma.
This book, as all the others before, is centered in a villain and how the police and FBI agents team up to discover who the villain is and how to get him before more people die or he hides away.
And my last sentence says it all when it comes to why I feel this author is no longer as amazing as I have thought after reading the first 11 or 12 books... the focus has turned too much to the villains and their horrible acts and not as much to the main couple or the positive side of an investigation.
I can understand why, after all, it's the gory details that often make people follow crime news and suspense stories but for me, the author has under looked the good things a bit too much.
There's so much detail in every step, so much attention to every little thing in the plot that I feel I lose too much time keeping in check every character's attention on something instead of simply enjoying the book.
The plot of this book follows the disgusting actions of "the Professor", a man who sells drugs and people. This villain was one of the ones who wasn't caught in the previous book when a team of drug buyers and dealers was discovered and exposed, including a pedophile as well, someone who had a connection to this "Professor". The police and the good guys need to stay one step ahead to catch him but sadly, it feels like that never happens except at the very end and only because of an apparent random mistake.
It always surprises me how the author can hold on writing about such depraved and disgusting villains, who do and think such horrible things. And then I feel so annoyed because we have way too many scenes from the villain's POV. Knowing he or she do these things is already bad enough but to have to spend pages and pages reading through their POVs makes me so irritated! I understand this is the way for us to feel empathy towards the victims and more so, for us to know why certain things happen and why the good guys sometimes can't but... truly annoying and I wish more time would be spent on developing the romance or the good side of things... real life is already too awful.
Of course, eventually the end makes it all right but... so much despair and abuse in the past of the characters...it gets a bit too depressing even knowing it can all be true. I also think the romance wasn't the strongest, it happened too fast, both Kate and Decker had issues and it didn't feel like their romance had enough time to properly develop or at least for it to be realistic.
But these books have a way of making it difficult to let them go, so... I keep reading even when I get annoyed.
The next book sounds amazing. I always think this but the next one truly does. I really hope it goes back to the type of book I felt in love with while reading this author's work.
Grade: 7/10
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