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Ellery Hathaway has done what she can to put her past behind her, at least to outsiders: She was the only surviving victim of an infamous serial killer when she was only 14, and now she goes by her middle name and works as a police officer in a small Massachusetts town.
But for two years, she’s been uneasy about some disappearances in Woodbury. Every year for three years, around the time of her birthday (and the date of her abduction by the killer), someone in town has disappeared. While her chief and others on their small force have easily brushed off the coincidence, she can’t shake the fear that someone else is about to disappear again. So she enlists the help of the FBI agent who found her locked in a closet, tortured and bleeding, years before.
Reed Markham is well-known for being the agent who saved young Abby Hathaway. He even wrote a book about the whole story. But now he’s on leave, after having made a major mistake that led to the death of an abducted boy, and his marriage is over. He is skeptical about Ellery’s claims but goes up to Woodbury in part because he wants to know how she’s doing after the horrors she endured as a teenager.
As days go by and Ellery reveals information only she has to Reed, a killer ramps up his game, pulling Reed and Ellery back into the terrors of the past and putting another innocent in the crosshairs. But they may not be able to convince anyone else of the danger awaiting in this “vanishing season” before it’s too late.
The Vanishing Season is a well-plotted and nicely paced thriller that thoughtfully examines the repercussions of one man’s evil acts on the life of a victim. Author Joanna Schaffhausen keeps readers guessing and turning pages even as she shows compassion to her main characters, in particular Ellery, who lives every day with the impossibility of ever truly getting over what she experienced. I enjoyed the book and appreciated the restraint shown by the author in writing just enough about the details of what happened so readers have an idea of the facts without going into gory and upsetting detail.
Rated: High, for about 7 instances of strong language and occasional uses of milder language. Sexual content includes references to characters sleeping together but no details, as well as a few mentions that a serial killer raped his victims, including a couple of brief mentions that he used objects at times. Also a brief reference or two to self-pleasuring. Violence includes the regular references to the modus operandi of the past serial killer and a current one who may or may not be a copycat: mainly, cutting victims and slicing off hands. There are a couple of mentions of domestic violence. There are several shootings. All in all, this book could be quite graphic given the topic, but I felt throughout that the author didn’t go into more detail than necessary. For a while I thought it may even get a mild or moderate rating, but there were more uses of strong language toward the end.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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