Ok, so this was a weird one for me. Mainly because it was just so damn familiar! And I honestly do not know why. As you can see from the cover photo, it was a TNT movie. So...maybe I saw that?
No idea, really.
I will say this was ever so slightly better than Alone.
At least I think it was. Maybe it was just because it was familiar.
I don't know. The deja vu really threw me off.
Again, DD takes a back seat to Bobby. So, that weirded me out again. And a lot of the same issues I had with Alone are back.
Sigh.
So, anyway, Bobby gets a call in the middle of the night before his first day as a detective - after the questions about the shooting in Alone, he needed a change. He gets this call from DD to come to a crime scene.
A crime scene that bears a remarkable similarity to where Catherine was kept when she was kidnapped as a child.
They find several bodies of young girls in trash bags - yeah, it's as yucky as it sounds. One of the bodies is wearing a locket with a name on it. Only, once the name hits the papers a woman comes in to see DD and Bobby claiming that it's her name. She's Annabelle.
And get this, Annabelle looks remarkably similar to Catherine. Enough to make Bobby and DD take her out to see Catherine - she moved from Boston at the end of Alone.
So, yeah, the wicked witch is back. And as bitchy as ever.
Thankfully we only have to deal with her for a little while.
Back to Annabelle. Annabelle moved away from Boston as a child and kept moving after. Her dad moved them every few months, city to city. A new name every time.
She never knew what she was running from though. She gave the locket to her best friend right before they moved away from Boston the first time. Her best friend is the one in the grave.
Who ever she's running from appears to have killed those girls.
Turns out her uncle was a bit crazy. Well, a lot crazy. He became obsessed with Annabelle. Started stalking her. Her father was sure his brother would kill all of them, but there was no real evidence. There were no stalking laws anyway, so either way the cops couldn't really do much about it.
He takes his wife and daughter, and they run.
So, the uncle killed the girls trying to replace the family he lost. The niece he lost.
Sad and super creepy.
There's no connection with Catherine at all - her son is doing well though, so there's that.
Now, I'm still hoping DD and Bobby will get back together, but it's not looking good. At the end, Bobby and Annabelle start dating.
*eye roll*
Anyway, I have some of the same concerns as the first book. DD still has tunnel vision - she keeps trying to force information into her theory. And if the information doesn't fit, she just discards it.
Hence the: Argh!
And the blaming the victim kind of thing happens again. Annabelle had a traumatic childhood, she must have killed her best friend and that's why her parents went on the run with them. Or, when they find the threat was real, well then she must have been twisted by running around her whole childhood.
Either way, she can't possibly be a victim, a good person. Oh no.
Plus, during the final showdown, her uncle is out. He could have lived and gone to jail, but she makes sure to do that little extra to make sure he's dead.
And Bobby does nothing.
So, first Catherine gets away with engineering her husband's death. Now, Annabelle kills her uncle after he's already neutralized. And neither suffer any consequences. OK, so that kind of contradicts my "she's a good person" thing, but you get my point on both accounts I think.
If it happens in the next book, then it's a pattern.
And yes, even though I still didn't really like this book that much, I'm going to try the next one. For one thing, I'm still waiting for DD to be the main character. Second, the deja vu made it next to impossible to decide if I liked this book better or not. Finally, I do think it was little better. I had most of the same problems with it that I did with Alone, but I think the idea behind it was more interesting.
Slightly.
So, I'll keep reading. Hopefully, I don't regret it.
Hide, Lisa Gardner
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