NetGalley Top Reviewer

NetGalley Top Reviewer
NetGalley Top Reviewer

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4) by Rachel Caine

This is the 4th installment in a series featuring Gwen Proctor, the former wife of notorious serial killer, Melvin Royal. She and her two children, Lanny and Connor (now 16 and 13), have been evading the tabloids and trying to escape their infamous past association with the now-dead Royal. Gwen is currently working as a PI and living at Stillhouse Lake with her children and her partner, Sam Cade. Everything should be settling down for them now and giving a chance for their family to find peace, but the people in town don't want them there and so many others still believe that there's no way that Gwen didn't know what her husband was up to. Lanny and Connor aren't doing well at school and it looks like they're going to have to move again. Then Gwen takes a missing persons case that makes the decision moot. Her boss asks her to look into a 3-year-old cold case involving a 21-year-old college student, Remy Landry, who vanished after going out drinking with his friends. Gwen goes to interview the parents and finds them totally broken. Her only lead is that he was apparently recently trying to help a girl named Carol but no one knows much about her. The investigation leads to a secret compound known as Bitter Falls and involves a lot more than one missing young man. NO SPOILERS.

I've been with Gwen since the beginning and I'm afraid the series is running out of steam as this felt so similar to the previous books in the series. Gwen's character hasn't changed much and, even though the whole family is in therapy, it doesn't seem to have done a lot for her or the kids. This is a fast read with the narrative shifting between points of view and it has lots of action between the good guys and the bad guys. Easy to read in a single sitting, I'm sure fans of the series won't be likely to miss this but I surely hope that Gwen starts moving in a different direction and can settle down somewhere and leave her past behind her once and for all.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for this e-book ARC to read and review.

This is the 4th book in a series that I have read from the beginning and I suggest readers do the same.
Genre - thriller

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