Vanishing Season

Zoa P. reviewed The vanishing season by Joanna Schaffhausen

None

4 stars

3.5* Good story, great suspense and even if some details are a quite a stretch to make the story believable, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief in order to get to know Ellery and Reed a bit more. The characters are likable enough that I’m about to begin #2 in the series, No Mercy, and am excited that their stories seem to go on for a few more books after that.

Ellery is a survivor and although she’s in law enforcement now, she’s still got her trauma and her triggers to deal with, and I always enjoy reading about a flawed hero that is doing their best. Just enough suspense to be interesting, but not send my heart racing too much, so I can read/listen before bed and still fall asleep without issue.

Excited to continue the journey…

Jonathan Arnold reviewed The vanishing season by Joanna Schaffhausen

Review of 'The vanishing season' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A pretty darned good first book! It tells the story of a survivor of a serial killer and the FBI agent who found her. She becomes a police officer and is convinced another serial killer is on the loose and is taunting her, so she calls in the FBI agent to help. He is kind of broken two and so they struggle to figure things out before the killer strikes again.

While there were some parts that just did not hang together, I thought it was really well done. The survivor angle was gradually exposed and I liked the counterpoint of the FBI agent, who writes a best selling book about it. Maybe things are a little too messy, but I enjoyed the fallible characters and the fact you aren't quite sure if either is a very reliable narrator, despite the overuse of that trope these days.

The solution was …

A pretty darned good first book! It tells the story of a survivor of a serial killer and the FBI agent who found her. She becomes a police officer and is convinced another serial killer is on the loose and is taunting her, so she calls in the FBI agent to help. He is kind of broken two and so they struggle to figure things out before the killer strikes again.

While there were some parts that just did not hang together, I thought it was really well done. The survivor angle was gradually exposed and I liked the counterpoint of the FBI agent, who writes a best selling book about it. Maybe things are a little too messy, but I enjoyed the fallible characters and the fact you aren't quite sure if either is a very reliable narrator, despite the overuse of that trope these days.

The solution was satisfying and the setting of a fictionally Massachusetts town was well done. It says it is the first in the "Ellery Hathaway" series, so I am wondering just where it goes from here. Is she going to stay on in the police department? Are her and her FBI agent going to start tracking down other serial killers, a la Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs? Who knows, but I am interested in finding out.

ohioseahawk

rated it

June 15, 2022

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