This book was intense and reminded me of watching criminal minds, a definite must read if you like thrillers, i couldn't put it down! Loved it! ( )

Typical but solid police procedural featuring an FBI forensic psychologist. ( )

Good story, mediocre narrator - shouldn't have tried the Boston accent. ( )

I've gone back and forth on whether to go two or three stars. I settled on three because the first half or so of the book had me trying to talk other people into reading it with me. It was interesting and fun and felt fairly plausible. The author's style felt very similar to [a:Robert Dugoni|63650|Robert Dugoni|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1405264763p2/63650.jpg]'s Tracy Crosswhite series. But as the book progressed, I became much less enthused.

There were a few things that bothered me about the writing, including the female character not feeling particularly genuine, but the biggest was the overused plot device of not communicating. Whether it was Zoe not communicating with Tatum or Zoe and Tatum not communicating with the appropriate law enforcement folks. It feels like the author is taking the easiest option to get to the conclusion they want. And it was used more than once in this book which compounds the frustration I felt.

I will say that the very last page left us with what could be a great sequel but I don't know that I like Zoe or Tatum enough to bother with it.
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I picked up Mike Omer’s A Killer’s Mind as an Amazon Prime First Read. What starts off as a standard serial killer tale, escalates to a page-turning thriller with an ending that doesn’t disappoint.

Tatum Gray is an instantaneously lovable character. Someone who takes care of his wild and crazy relative (think Bad Grandpa) and who assumes a protector role over Zoe, with whom he starts out having friction.

I get it. Psychologist Zoe Bentley took me a while to warm up to, too. Her backstory unfolds in a then-and-now plot featuring an over-zealous teen-wanna-be-sleuth with the usual stakes and tropes. Girls are being murdered in her childhood hometown, and Zoe is a natural born investigator, taking over when the police fail to see past the outcast who is the obvious suspect because he plays D&D. Zoe is sure he’s innocent, that she knows who the real killer is, but no one believes her, because she’s “just a kid.”

I was afraid I knew where this was headed, and it all felt way too convenient, until it didn’t.

The turning point in the book validates all the time spent on Zoe’s obsession and presumably lines up a nemesis for the next installment. This is a series novel, which does what a lot of first-in-series books fail to: it comes to both a satisfying conclusion, and ends with a bit of a cliffhanger.

I have a long TBR, but I might check back in on this series down the road and see what Zoe gets up to. I’m curious what her nemesis has planned after a particularly dark chapter with teen Zoe and her young sister, locked in her childhood bedroom. It took a minute for the author to get there, but from the mid-point on, it was all stakes, stakes, stakes…

Recommended for fans of the Todd Ritter (who you might know as Riley Sager) Kat Campbell series. Sometimes dark, sometimes funny, other times eye-rollingly corny and cliché, I’m torn between giving this one a three-and-a-half or four-star rating. The back half really did redeem a slow start. ( )