Helen PhiferRezensionen

I enjoyed this story, it was not at all what I was expecting. It is more of a paranormal thriller featuring supernatural elements and conflict between good and evil. It starts with four teenagers ghost hunting one night in an old abandoned mental institution. Only three come out and the lost girl Riley Holt is lost to who knows where. There is a malevolent force within the walls of the hospital that is keeping lost souls of former patients from moving on after their deaths and Riley has been taken by this force back in time. Agent Maria Miller and her partner Frankie have been called in to help find Riley as they have had former experience dealing with the paranormal. How will they retrieve Riley from another dimension is the question of the day. The story is short and fast paced. Recommended for fun. 3.5 stars.

Many thanks to Net Galley and Dreamscape Select, Storm Publishing for an ARC of this audiobook.½

Four friends exploring a haunted building leads one to being trapped inside.

Marie Miller is a homicide detective in New York. Her partner, Frankie, is asked to assist with a missing teen case in the next county. Marie and Frankie learn that the missing teen, Riley, may be trapped inside the decaying Beacon Hill Asylum. Marie discovers that a dark entity has trapped her in 1960 when the asylum functioned with staff and patients. Marie must race against time and travel back to save her before her eventual death.

Helen's description of Beacon Hill Asylum brings creepy and dark to vivid imagery. It makes you shiver as if you are walking and hearing things with the four teenagers. In addition to her descriptions of place, the author has strong characters. Marie is a sceptic at first until she is almost loses her life after encountering a dark entity. She becomes brave when she faces the entity to save Riley before it's too late. As a fan of scary and dark stories, I highly recommend this book.

My second book by Helen Phifer...yes, I know that it's book 7. The book has plenty of the "thriller "element to give the reader all the thrills, chills and shocking moments that they can handle. Again, it seems that Detective Morgan Brookes draws murders to her small village. This time her team investigates a dead body found in local churchyard ditch and things start to escalate in an alarming way. They have to ask if there is a deranged killer in their small village and could the killer be someone that they all know? I enjoyed and felt that it was worthy of a 5 -star rating even though the ending was a bit abrupt and didn't completely answer all my questions or all the questions the team had during the investigation. I am looking forward to seeing what Morgan is up to next...and, where her relationship with her partner, Ben, is headed. It was good to see a few new characters make an appearance, and I liked what they added to the team. I don’t know if they will be back, but some guest appearances would be nice. Morgan is again a danger" magnet". If you've read any of this series, you will know what I'm saying. If you haven’t read and met Detective Morgan Brookes, I do highly recommend this series. You can easily start this series with this one, or any of the first 6 books, but I know that may not work well for everyone, but you wouldn't be entirely lost. I didn’t mention on of my favorite characters, Declan...but I have to give him his due credit. He is written as one of the kindest souls I have ever encountered whose job it is to deal with the dead. He has the most caring manner. I love the character of Morgan Brookes and believe if you are a Mystery/Suspense/Thriller fan that and you will like this series and its characters also.

A group of young women who are survivors of attacks have formed a support group. They are all “final girls”, the women who lived. Now it seems someone is trying to kill them off. One of them, Lexie, is already dead. This is personal for Detective Morgan Brookes, herself considered a “final girl”, also having survived attacks by perpetrators of some of those crimes and she feels guilty that she was not able to save Lexie a second time. All of them are in grave danger.

This is the eleventh in the Morgan Brookes series; I have read three of them. This is another engrossing, if somewhat macabre, fast paced read for those who enjoy British police procedurals, mysteries, and thrillers. It works well as a standalone, but you will have a better understanding and appreciation of the characters background if you read some of the earlier ones as well.

I have added Phifer’s Morgan Brookes series to my list of mystery/thrillers I enjoy that feature capable female detectives with amiable supporting characters.

Thanks to #netgalley and @bookouture for the ARC.

thriller, detective, missing-persons, cold-case, supernatural, horror, abandoned-building, escaped-prisoner, family, family-drama, psychics, psychological-thriller, time-travel, dual-time-frames, famous-persons, unputdownable*****

Scary occult vibes for NYC Detective Maria Miller and her partner of the Strange Crimes Unit.
The story flips between 2023 and 1960. Both perspectives revolve around the abandoned mental asylum’s story and how events in 1960 interact with the people now. The further you get into the book, the more the different pieces come together to create a creepy supernatural crime thriller.
I requested and received an EARC from Storm Publishing via NetGalley

We follow Detective Maria Miller and her partner, Frankie, as they investigate a brutal crime in the attic of a Greenwich brownstone, where decades earlier a beautiful actress was murdered in the same way. The detectives are puzzled by the disturbing similarities between the crimes occurring in this house and wonder if and how they could possibly be connected? They speculate that they may have a sadistic copycat on their hands or is it something much more sinister? Immediately upon entering the brownstone, Maria feels something dark. It’s a tickle in her senses...something equally unpleasant and unsettling. The way the crime scene has been staged only adds to those feelings. In both the past and present cases, body parts had been removed from the victims and not found. Also, there is strong evidence of satanic rituals at both the past and the present crime scenes. They question who could possibly want to recreate something so evil? The story is told in a dual timeline with Maria and Frankie in the present, and a historical perspective featuring the events leading up to the past murder in the house. We are also offered a modern perspective from an unknown individual, who appears to maybe be the "bad guy". I liked getting the multi-perspectives as well as the history. The past sections were a bit slower paced than the modern perspectives, but helpful when putting it all together. It helped to give the needed insight into the property and all the characters involved. The house itself became a major character itself in the story providing lots of chills and unexpected activities. Fans of haunted house stories and good murder mysteries will more than likely really like this offering.

My Thoughts:

This is my first Helen Phifer read and I would read her again.

There is a slow burn romance implied between our two main protagonists. However, whether the author is going to actually pair the two of them up or just titillate the audience, in the long run, remains to be seen.

Alison Campbell is a talented voice-artist who brought the characters to life! Her voice is soothing to the ears and I would buy audiobooks by her again.

Quantitative Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 3.5
Story itself = 4.5
Writing Style = 4.5
Ending = 4
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 4
Pace = (9 hrs and 23 mins listening time)
Plot = 4
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5

So I'm giving this one 3 stars simply because I finished it. I think the summary reads like a completely different story than the actual book itself. The book basically is Maddy moving to a house the town avoids because they think it's haunted, because somone died in the lake years ago, and a serial killer uses it as his burial grounds. When we get the serial killer's point of view it's literally him upset that Maddy is there and might uncover his secret. The dead bride and Maddy feeling like she's been there before are not even related to the plot at all. I think the author tried to put too much into this with various plots, to mask who the killer could be, but in that everything got lost.

It's pretty evident before the reveal who the killer is. I think the story would have been much more interesting if the author had chosen to focus on the drowned bride aspect of the story instead of having a serial killer element. I really thought that was the direction we were going after all. The book's conclusion doesn't solve anything and makes no sense. I spent the entire time liking hardly any of these characters, and none of them experienced any growth or development by the end of the story... a story which just abruptly comes to a close with lots of unanswered questions. It just felt like every action in this book was to help give the character a reason to behave a specific way in the next chapter. I feel like the author had picked one angle or even used less character's the story could have been a bit better. It just felt rushed. We got no reasoning for why the killer did what he did. It was just disappointing.

winter, procedural, law-enforcement, Cumbria, Lake-District, England, murder-investigation, murder, series, serial-killer, real-horror, rituals, relationships, PTSD, grief, grieving, suspense, thriller*****

First let me give the caveat that I really hate getting into the head of a serial torturer/murderer. Balance that with my opinion that this book is really well written and that I didn't skip a page even once. The publisher's blurb gives a good intro, so no need to recap. The characters easily became real to me, as were the other descriptions and world-building. An intense read broken with witty banter.
I requested and received a free e-book copy from Bookouture via NetGalley. Thank you

I quite liked the characters but the story line was a bit hit and miss for me. That said I will read the next in tge series

When Shirley Kelly's body is discovered, only Detective Morgan Brookes thinks there is more to the crime scene. The entire scene seemed to be a clever, macabre set-up...stopped clocks, covered mirrors, even the missing hair. When a second body is found set-up the same way...Morgan's theory is given a lot more credit. This a thriller that moves along rapidly with the clues carefully handed out as the book moves forward. At no time does the story provide an easy to solve mystery. I spent most of the book thinking that I knew who did it and what the plot twist might be, only to find out everything I believed was...you guessed...WRONG. I really like when that happens because it keeps me trying again and again. I don't want to solve the mystery myself halfway through the book and this author at no intentions of allowing that to happen. This was yet another great book by an excellent author, and I enjoyed every single page.

A house is on fire in an upscale neighborhood; inside it is the scene of the gruesome murder of three members of a family. Detective Constable Morgan Brooks and her team are on the case. While they investigate, the perpetrator has already picked out their next target.

The Morgan Brooks series was recommended to me by a fellow bookstagrammer; it is the first of the eight that I have read. It was a fast, engrossing read; the kind of mystery I typically like. While I enjoyed it, I don’t think it completely worked as a standalone. Regarding the members of the team and their past history, I felt as though I was coming in in the middle of a story and would have liked a brief summary to catch up. Some series authors are very careful to help new readers catch up; that did not occur in this book. I also felt that there were some questions left unanswered about the case. Despite these concerns, it was a decent read and I will certainly seek out number nine when it is available

A digital ARC of this book was provided to me by NetGalley and Bookouture. The opinions are my own and freely given.

This is #8 in the Morgan Brookes series.
This story starts in 1991 at a nightclub. The musics pumping, the drinks are flowing and the bodies are dancing. Then one of partiers leaves and a traffic accident ensues.

Fast forward to present day. A family is murdered, a neighbor is questioned and the street busy body makes a friend with Morgan.

As I went through this book, I forgot all about 1991, until about the same time that Morgan started to connect the dots. The team gains a new member who sees to calm Amy down a bit.

This is another excellent story in this series. I highly recommend reading them all.

Morgan Brookes, a new recruit policewoman, becomes involved in a murder investigation in the English Lake District. She is assigned to research a similar crime that took place in the same house 45 years ago. The story details and characters all worked for me until halfway through the book. Then there is a shift when a total turn of events takes place. From then on the action becomes frantic and predictable while the characters are virtually cartoonish.

It was ok, not great... I might try another, but not just yet

Morgan Brookes is new on the job as a Police Officer but that doesn't keep her from being thrown into the deep end on her first ride with Detective Sergeant Ben Matthews. The scene is an apparent suicide. Olivia Potter is suspended from a tree in the front yard, no one else is at home. Saul, Olivia's husband, can't be found. Neither can the two daughters, Bronte, and Beatrix, so no death notification to next of kin has been made. Harrison Wright, the boyfriend of one of the daughters is the one that made the discovery and appears to be very upset. His behavior in the days that follow appear to the police to be is questionable. The reason no one can find the other family members soon becomes an even more tragic event. The story was very well written and there were many, many suspects to choose from.... almost too many. I didn't get it right, but I had a great time unraveling it. I always consider it a plus when I don't figure out "who done it" before the author exposes him or her. The author used a clever way to introduce the next book. unbeknownst to Morgan, or any of her colleagues, she is now in the sights of someone very dangerous and it may not be just her time in CID which comes to an abrupt end. Stay tuned.

It was just ok. Typical thriller/mystery with an emotionally damaged protagonist. The same formula everybody seems to use anymore. I had a hard time with the fact that she had suffered a trauma but yet they never really revealed the nature of the trauma until nearly the end of the book. It would maybe have made her character make a little more sense throughout the book. But given her past it seemed so unlikely that she would be investigation this in the first place. She seemed to stay in her protected little bubble...until she didn't...but then she'd go right back to being afraid of her own shadow.

A woman goes missing from a tent in a remote campsite in the Lake District overnight and when searching for her in the forest the police discover a body that seems to have been there for years. Could these bodies be connected and do they have a serial killer on their hands? Morgan and her team are then contacted by a retired policeman who says ‘The Travelling Man’ is responsible and keeps them alive for 72 hours.

Cue a fast paced crime thriller in which Morgan and her colleagues race against time to catch a serial killer before he kills the woman he has abducted. This is a book that you don’t want to put down as you need to know what happens next and if they will rescue the victim before she is killed, or before he sets out to abduct another woman.

This is the fifth book in the series but is as addictive as the other books in the series and is a great read. During it Morgan’s past comes back to haunt her and relationships within the team develop. But Morgan being Morgan we know she can be her own worst enemy and is prepared to put her life on the line to catch a killer but there are a few surprises and shocks awaiting her.

This is an excellent story which had me gripped throughout and I strongly recommend it to any avid readers of fast paced and action driven crime fiction. Morgan is a great character and you won’t be sorry you picked the book up. I can’t wait to read the next one.

Thanks to the publisher, author and Net Galley for a review copy of the book in exchange for a fair, open and honest review.½

Annie Ashworth is on leave from the police force due to being pregnant. Annie's husband has also been recovering from being brutally attacked in the previous book. But it's time for him to return to work as a police and the first case back is that of a body discovered in the woods. Could this be the body of a young girl that went missing years ago?

The Girls in the Woodsis the 5th book in The Annie Graham Series. I haven't read the previous four books, but there were no problems for me getting into the story, despite mentions of previous events that had happened in the previous books.

I was instantly intrigued by the book's blurb and that gorgeous cover. I was also pleased when I realized that it was a paranormal crime novel and just not a crime novel which I had expected it to be. I do love reading crime (or any other kind of genres) with a bit of paranormal mix into it. Annie in this series can see ghost and that has helped her in the past because apparently, she is danger magnet. She is also expecting her first child with her new husband and her life is quite good since she was married before to an abusive man. But, this case will open up old wounds and also bring danger to Annie and someone close to her.

There are some things with the book that didn't work for me. For instance, I'm not overly fond of crime novels when the identity of the killer is revealed in the beginning. I prefer living in uncertainty and having to figure it out along the way. Also, the book started with a flashback to the end of 1900-century and a man taking a picture of three sisters whereof one of them is dead, and I thought that was a great beginning and I thought that it would have something to do with the story. But, it didn't instead we have a man discovering a Memento Mori book at his grandfather's place when he was a child and he got obsessed with taking dead people's photographs. That story just didn't impress me that much.

I was not completely pleased with the end, it felt so absurd when I read it, but now after some contemplation can I see how it in a way fitted with the story. But, when I read it was I very skeptical of it. On the plus side, the twist was truly unexpected, but I'm annoyed that the revelation made the fate of one of the main character in this book unexplained. I wanted to know how that turn of the event would affect that person, but the book just ended without any explanation.

All and all, not so good that I thought it would be when I started the book, but still enjoyable and I wouldn't mind reading the rest of the books. And lucky me, I have book four and I'm looking forward to reading it.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley in an exchange for an honest review!

Read this review and others on A Bookaholic Swede

DNF 27%

I had too many issues with this story for it to entertain me.

I really, really wanted to like this book, but for me were there just too many things that bothered me to truly enjoy reading this book. The Lost Children started off great, with the discovery of a dead body in the old asylum and I enjoyed the flashbacks during the books progress to 1975 when young Lizzy is committed to the asylum. I was intrigued by the story and wondered what the past had to do with the present murder.

However, I started to feel a bit annoyed with Detective Lucy Harwin as the story progressed, especially her private life. Her ex-husband had left her for another woman, and to be honest can I understand him and I can also understand why their daughter wanted to live with him instead of Lucy. Lucy, in my opinion, acted more like a woman in her early twenties than her thirties. The worst thing is that I felt the same about Mattie, and yes he is a few years younger than Lucy, but it felt like they were adolescents not grown adults working as cops. And Mattie's crush on Lucy did not amuse me either.

Then we have the case, it was just too predictable and Lucy made some extraordinary leaps in the investigations that astonished me. I mean the kind of "I have no evidence to support this, but I think this is right since I'm clairvoyant, so let's go for it. No, she's not clairvoyant, but there were moments when I honestly thought she was since everything could be normal, but she had a gut feeling that something was wrong and of course it was. Then, we have the killers identity, no big surprise there either.

The part I like the best was the flashbacks to asylum if the book had focused more on the past and the girls there and had a stronger case with more mature characters would I have loved this book. This book had potentials and the first half of the book is good, but the later half just didn't work for me so much.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review!

suspense, thriller, procedural, murder, murder-investigation, series, law-enforcement, relationship-issues, vendetta, PTSD, suspicion, England*****

This is the first I have read by this author but that didn't impair my enjoyment a bit. It opens with
DC Morgan Brookes and her boss/partner DS Ben Matthews called to investigate a vile odor in a residence and finding a days old corpse complete with maggots. The mirrors are all covered and the clocks are stopped. And the autopsy shows that she has been strangled. Later, an obvious murder with the same stage-setting is discovered. This really is a fast-paced thriller with lots going on! A good read!
I requested and received a free e-book copy from Bookouture via NetGalley. Thank you

A body has been discovered in an old abandoned church. Detective Lucy Harwin is assigned the case, her first murder inquiry as the lead detective. Is this just a one off or will more bodies be found. Although most of the book is told from Harwin's point of view there are chapters which relate the childhood of the unknown killer.
Although it was an interesting, well-written story I just didn't take to the character of Harwin or some of her actions.
A NetGalley Book

I read the book Ghost House as a reader not an editor, since there were no outrageous mistakes, likes the wrong words used or words mixed around in a sentence I paid attention to the story which was FANTASTIC. If you like romance, ghosts, crime, mystery, this is the book for you. I can't wait to go on to the next book. People need to read a book for the story not look for mistakes that don't slap you in the face. Run on sentences please that is ridiculous to even notice, I guess I read so fast i just wanted to know what happened next.

I loved this series I'm sad it might be over