Another solid cop thriller from Lisa Gardner. I generally find myself enjoying her books for their easy flow and captivating entertainment, although they tend toward the generic side of the genre. Which is to say, if you like cop thrillers, I highly recommend checking her out, but she's certainly not doing anything groundbreaking or spectacular.

I did want to like this one a little better than I did, however. I had some issues with how separate the two different story lines were for most of the story. Flora and the cops are investigating one thing, Evie is off doing something different. Yes, they're connected (that's not a spoiler, of course everything is connected in some way), but it felt like it took too long to get there and it was jarring to switch between them. I felt like I'd get invested in one story line only to have to switch over to something unrelated, and each time it was just a bit irritating. It made me want to put the book down on occasion. It just seemed like there was too much going on with too many main characters, which left the story feeling unnecessarily convoluted.

The whole Flora teaming up with the true crime junkie was weird and seemed 1. completely unnecessary for the plot (she said she went to him because she needed him, but he didn't seem to play any necessary role? it literally could have been a nameless fbi computer tech and everything would have been the same) 2. the suggested romance was a little gross and cringey. I guess we know what's going to be up with Flora in the next book or two. I really like Flora as a character, but it feels like Gardner is running out of interesting things to do with her. Find Her was probably my favorite, but I wouldn't be disappointed to see Flora's character take a break.

I also had an issue with the plot twist at the end. Tropes like that don't need to exist in 2019. Will discuss in spoiler tags, but it's a heavy spoiler that is literally the main point of the book, so be warned.

Spoiler

Essentially, the villain responsible is gay and was in love with the victim, he killed out of anger for rejecting him. (It's more complicated, but that's it in essence.) I thought the whole evil gay thing had gone out in the 90s. Like obviously gay characters can be villains, it's not about that, but when it's the only gay character and it's kind of centered around their gayness? Plus I've read a lot (most) of Gardner's books and she very rarely includes gay characters, so it felt especially cringey.

But overall, still entertaining. Glad I read it, and I'll continue reading Lisa Gardner's new releases every year.

An additional note on the series aspect of this book: It's the 10th in the DD Warren series, but you don't have to read them all in order. However, the books do follow DD Warren in her life, so you will get spoilers, especially in regards to her personal life, and general commentary on some past cases. I would recommend reading Find Her first (which I believe is book 8 in the series). Find Her will give you a lot of important background info on Flora Dane. But if you don't want to read that, you could probably still get by okay in this book because Gardner does a pretty decent recap at the beginning.