published by Ballantine Books in January 2007
Eighteen years old Angie Vance was repetitively raped and then murdered through suffocation in a garbage bag - her mouth sealed with glue and an obscenity scrawled across her skin. Detective Carina Kinkaid, a very dedicated cop, is primary on the case and suspects Steve Thomas, a 40 y.o. man who still attend college part-time and ex-boyfriend of the victim. To protect himself, Steve calls his younger brother, Sheriff Nick Thomas, who've just escaped a recent confrontation with a serial killer from which he is still scarred and unsteady.
Series: Book 1 of Evil trilogy
Genre: contemporary, romantic suspense
Review: Hmmm... There is a number of reasons why I didn't like this book, but mainly, it was Carina Kinkaid and how easy it was in the end to solve the case.
The Characters - I usually don't enjoy the characters who've become cops because murders have changed their life, because inevitably, it's going to impact the story. When Carina was still a teenager, she was baby-sitting her nephew. While she fell asleep, her nephew was kidnapped and then murdered. This event impacted the whole family - Carina became a cop, her brother who just finished medical school became a psychiatrist/profiler and Nelia, the mother, left San Diego and went to live away from her family. In addition, from that day, Carina was never left alone with her younger sister, Lucy, who was the same age as her nephew. Of course, Carina blames herself for what happened. What annoyed me was that everything always came back to Carina - it made her appears selfish and I couldn't sympathize with her at all. She's only been detective for over a year, but she acts as if she has tons of experience, she knows better. Also, everything went way too easy for her in this investigation: whatever she wants, she gets. It just isn't realist to me. However, what annoyed me the most is that at the beginning, she focused only on Steve Thomas as a suspect. Granted, he did look suspicious, but a good cop would have looked beyond the ex-bf a little bit.
Nick was okay and he had his own problems as well... maybe too much. Overall, I thought the characters were not developed enough and there was no chemistry between Nick and Carina - it was hard to believe that they fell in love, at least, enough that they would both be willing to abandon their life and career, esp. given the time they knew each other.
Story & Writing - The writing was all right, the story... The MO of the murders were interesting, but not enough to carry the whole book. As I said also, Carina had it way easy - autopsy would be done right away, when she wanted Nick on the team as consultant, she got immediately, her ex-bf would do the DNA tests and analysis, brother, the profile and other brother, the informatics stuff. There wasn't even that much suspense and really, how they figured out who was the killer - sheer luck.
The Cover - it was attractive enough for me to pick up the book and buy it.
Am I keeping it? Nope - anyone wants it? The cover is a bit teared up tho ^^;
Anything else? This is the first book of a trilogy. Book 2 will be about about one of Carina's brother, the PI who was mentionned, but not seen. Book 3 is about Dillon Kinkaid, the psychiatrist. I'll probably going to try another of Allison Brennan books in the future, but I'm not touching this series.
