Wildflower Graves is Book #2 in the Detective Ellie Reeves series. This follows Rita Herron’s The Silent Dolls that I reviewed here earlier.
Description
The darkness closed around her. She tried to clear her vision, but there was no light, no noise, nothing. Only the emptiness, the echoing sound of being alone. Fear pulsed through her. The man had come out of nowhere. Who was he? Blinking away tears of frustration, in the pitch black she felt the floor and walls surrounding her. Cold. Steel. Bars.
Detective Ellie Reeves heads into the wilds of the Appalachian Mountains when she wants to get lost––to forget the whispers chasing her and the past that keeps her up at night. She’s sick of having to prove herself to her small town.
But hiking in the endless miles of woods isn’t the escape she was hoping for. One night, as dusk falls, a gust of wind blows some petals on to Ellie’s path. Following the trail, she finds a golden-haired young woman dead on a bed of daffodils, with a note: Monday’s child is fair of face.
When Ellie emerges from the forest, there is a message on her phone. Someone has sent her a picture of her colleague, Officer Shondra Eastwood, with the words: Can you find her, Detective Reeves? Ellie is racked with guilt––while she was busy hiding from life a killer was on the loose, and he has taken her beloved friend.
The wilderness, and its shadows, are the perfect hunting ground for a criminal––but what does the sinister nursery rhyme mean? It soon becomes clear when another dead woman, Tuesday’s Child, is found.
Ellie is up against a serial killer who will claim a victim for every day of the week, and in the next twenty-four hours there will be another body. As this ruthless murderer closes in on her, can she save more innocent women––and Shondra––from his clutches? Or will he get to Ellie first?
An utterly gripping and completely breathless crime thriller for fans of Lisa Regan, Kendra Elliot and Melinda Leigh. You’ll have trouble falling asleep after this heart-pounding page-turner!
My Review of Wildflower Graves
Although you don’t need to have read Silent Dolls to enjoy Wildflower Graves, reading it would help to understand the context of this case, especially the fact that Ellie Reeves’ father has been under the scanner. Ellie is struggling to with her parents’ silence about her own adoption and the young boy who was given up by them and turned into a monster.
Now, three weeks later, Ellie is once again trying to solve the series of grisly murders of young women. They are found at various spot on the Appalachian Trail, laid out on a bed of wildflowers and with their throats slit! The killer keeps taunting Ellie with text messages. And then it gets really personal when Ellie’s fellow detective and friend, Shondra Eastwood disappears. Will Ellie be able to save Shondra?
The book is highly suspenseful and cleverly written. Just when you think that you know who the killer is, the story takes another twist!
FBI Special Agent Derrick Fox and Cord make appearances again and there’s the underlying romantic draw between Ellie and both these men.
Author Bio:
USA Today Bestselling and award-winning author Rita Herron fell in love with books at the ripe age of eight when she read her first Trixie Belden mystery. But she didn’t think real people grew up to be writers, so she became a teacher instead. Now she writes so she doesn’t have to get a real job.
With over ninety books to her credit, she’s penned romantic suspense, romantic comedy, and YA novels, but she especially likes writing dark romantic suspense and crime fiction set in small southern towns.
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Thanks to Netgalley, Bookouture and the author for providing me a copy to review