★★★★½
Montlake Romance | 2017
Filed Under: Protect your lady-bits
I’m telling you right now, this book is the motherfucking shit.
Not even an exaggeration, honey.
And it’s the shit for one reason. Yes, it’s got murder. Yes, it’s got sex. Yes, it’s got a psycho serial killer. Yes, it’s hitting that fine line in the level of detail. Yes, it reads like real-life honesty. Yes, it’s got gore. Yes, it takes place in C to the A to the N to the A to the D to the A…
Hold on, did I spell that right? *goes back to check* Yep.
CANADA!
But listen to me readers and lovers: without Detective Angie Pallorino as a lead character, we would be sitting at a three-star rating. That’s just the truth.
Was there anything astonishing about the storyline? Not really. It’s interesting, but at the end of the day, it’s a police procedural. Extra points for taking place in Canada and getting my Canadian ass a little hyped because I’m always reading books that take place in the UK or the US. And quite honestly I’ve had just about enough of the United States at this juncture.
I’m pretty sure serial killers obsessed with religious bullshit have been done to death.
But do you know what’s not done to death?
Serial killers obsessed with religious bullshit who are being hunted by Angie Pallorino.
She might be my favourite new character that I’ve read in forever. She’s giving you angry, damaged, ambitious and intelligent sex-vixen realness, 100% of her page time. She does not disappoint in how well thought out her psychological issues are and how cohesive it is to the storyline.
I will say there are explicit sex scenes in this one that gave me the vapours. Typically I don’t really like that in my reads unless I’m specifically looking for it. Like, we’re hunting a dangerous psycho who could kill again at any second, but real quick let me throw it in you.
No, thanks.
But the sex scenes in this actually worked for me because they were personally telling as much as they were physically telling. And they were very physically telling.
If you want to know what happens to an emotionally stunted woman when she has emotionally connecting sex for the first time, read this. I’m not saying I do or do not have experience with this because you are not my therapist, but if I were to have an understanding of that then this would have totally connected to me in a very real way.
I could have done without the nickname ‘Mr. Big Dick’, though.
The character bestowed with that unfortunate, but apparently measurably accurate nickname, is Angie’s new partner, James Maddocks. Though he’s supposed to be this enigmatic, sexy beast of a man that helps to provide perspective to Angie about her own life in some ways, I wasn’t as interested in him as I should have been considering his role. He was kind of vague in his character development, you know besides, the size of his penis being mentioned a lot.
Personality-wise he seemed kind of bland, too focused on his grown-ass daughter’s feelings over his divorce, and since we’re on the topic, too focused on his divorce. He seemed emotionally distracted, so I wasn’t able to connect with him or even really decide if I liked him.
That’s not to say he and Angie didn’t have chemistry, because…
You get it.
This book feels taken care of as if the author babied it until it was ready to fly. It’s well researched in terms of the psychology and the religious aspects, but I do have some questions about the way the politics and justice system were presented. It was very Americanized. Was it done on purpose, disregarding facts? Or was it not researched? Points for wanting to set a novel in Canada, but minus points for not engaging in the major differences in how Canadian law works.
Overall, the setting is dark, the storyline is dark, Angie is dark and the sex is dark but somehow this book made me feel light and airy and a little turned on.
🔪🔪🔪
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?
Book source: The publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
heresthefuckingtwist.com 
So I bought this one the other day when you reviewed the other one in this series! And I could read your reviews all day because, as I keep saying, they are fun and entertaining, and when you love a book, I pretty much have to add it. Thanks, Krystin!
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Highest compliment ever, Jennifer! Thank you. Also comes with some pressure because what if you hate it. But you won’t. If I gave money away, you’d get a money back guarantee. So glad we found each other in this book world lol!
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