Review: Disappointed
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 16, 2012
I loved the first book in the series and immediately downloaded the next two. The second one was ok, but by the time I got to this one, I was about over Laura Cardinal. The first thing you need to know is that, although this is a series, they can easily be read as stand alone books. This is good in some ways, but the bad part is that there is NO continuity between novels. There are brief mentions of events from earlier books, but people don't show up and in fact, by this book, Laura doesn't even work at the same place. My second problem was the paranormal emphasis in this book.Basically, Laura is now working cold cases and is investigating the disappearance of several little girls. One body is found, and one girl returns alive, and Laura must try to figure out how the cases fit together and what happened to each one. The guy who found the dead body keeps seeing the ghost of the little girl who leads him to clues about what happened. The ending was SO obvious that I had figured it out halfway through the book, and so the payoff for finishing was minimal. It dragged horribly in the middle and I had to force myself to continue reading.The biggest issue is that you don't really get to know any of the characters. Even Laura herself tells us how she feels instead of allowing us to discover that. It fits with her character, but since she IS so closed off from the people around her, we don't ever feel connected either. The first story was good enough to propel the story despite the lack of connection to the characters. This one was not. It isn't horrible, but I expected more.