Thank you to Penguin Random House and the First to Read program for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
At first, I wasn’t aware that this book was part of a series. And when I saw that it was the 6th novel, I gave up on the idea of trying to read the previous novels before this one. I just hoped I could follow along! Here is my review:
Helen Grace was one of the best police investigators. Now, she finds herself behind bars with the very killers she caught. Framed for murder, she knows that her only chance to make things right is to survive until her trial and prove her innocence. But when a mutilated body is found in the cell next door, Helen realizes that someone is targeting prisoners … and she might be next.
At first, it was a little hard to catch up with the story. This is a book best enjoyed after reading all of the previous novels, as it will just make things easier to understand. However, I was still able to get the gist of things and it was still a really enjoyable read. I liked Helen’s character a lot; even though she was a prison, she showed intelligence and grit at all times. I make note of this because a lot of times I find that authors don’t maintain the personality of the protagonist as the story progresses, which is a pet peeve for me. But that didn’t happen here so YAY! There were a lot of other characters that were integral to the story; at first that worried me because I am terrible at remembering people, but the author made each one unique and made sure to make many connections and reminders so I didn’t have that problem. This novel basically has 2 stories going on: Helen trying to figure out who the killer is in the prison, and Charlie, Helen’s friend, trying to prove that Helen is innocent by arresting the right person. I found myself more drawn to Helen’s story than Charlie’s; it was more organized while Charlie just seemed to run around a lot, grasping at straws. The fact that Charlie managed to sort things out was a little hard for me to believe, but perhaps the detective work for that was set up in a previous novel so I don’t want to pass judgement on that. I also liked that the story was told from different perspectives as it gave the story more depth. Overall, this was an enjoyable read and I think I may actually read the rest of the series!
Happy reading ~
