Michelle Posthumus

Kristi Benz heads back to college because she wants to write true crime stories and the college she attends had four girls go missing. Everyone says they ran away and the police don’t want to investigate. Kristi decides to do some investigating herself and finds out they may have belong to a vampire cult on campus. Soon she finds herself in trouble and oh, yeah, her ex-boyfriend teaches a class at the school. A romantic suspense story it is. Fifth in a series, but still works well as a show more standalone as they add a little back story which doesn’t affect the storyline. show less

I've read Lisa Jackson before (a client was reading a book of hers and said it was good) so when I saw this title on the library sale shelf I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm not sure if it's true, but it feels like this was written during the vampire literature craze (think Twilight etc.) and in response to that craze.

I do like the neat turn of phrase where Lost Souls can represent several things: losing your soul/losing your way in your faith; Catholic teachings on losing your soul (since show more this is set at a Catholic college); the references to lost souls in vampiric literature.

I liked the idea of Kristi Bentz wanting to write true crime books, but the execution did fall a bit flat at times, so I'm not sure it's one of Jackson's best.

Like most titles in the genre, there are references to sexual escapades--perhaps a few more in this book than in ones I've read recently. show less

SUMMARY: The latest in Jackson's series revolving around the ever-expanding family of tragic heroine Faith Daniels finds Kristi Bentz, a secondary character from the previous installments, at the forefront. Recovered from a previous attack, Kristi decides to re-enroll at her alma mater, All Souls College, to further her aspirations of becoming a true crime writer. The fact that several female students have gone missing from the campus only intrigues her more.

WHY YOU'LL LIKE IT: Jackson has a show more knack for creating and developing likable heroines, and Kristi Bentz no different. As she was established in other books, it's nice to see her get a turn as a main character. Jackson endeavors to capture the gothic allure of New Orleans in these epic potboilers, and adequately succeeds.

WHY YOU WON'T: Despite the potential of this series, the plots have become formulaic and often ludicrous. How many serial killers can one family, disjointed or not, attract? Jackson's antagonists have become predictable and boring, whispering their bland threats into the ears of the reader, usually mixed with laughable profanity about his desire to violate sexually the protagonist; the killers are no longer distinguishable from each other and it's frankly impossible to care what their motives are or what drives them; it has become simply a matter of counting the bodies they leave in their wake until the inevitable concluding showdown. The romance scenes are pedantic and pejorative, and it's offensive to read the women of Jackson's novels become so besotted with their paramours that they become caricatures of themselves, not to mention the predilection the author has of shining the light of suspicion on said suitors, making her heroines' eventual submission all the more pathetic. Most aggravating is the heroines' penchant for putting themselves in harm's way (often planned) while not having taken the necessary precautions and thus requiring a man to ride to their rescue; regardless of self-defense training or that can of mace for which they never reach in time, it would be nice to see one of these women let someone know what they're up to and where they're going prior to racing off on a half-cocked 'mission'. The plotting is haphazard and shoddy, and the novel runs about one hundred-fifty pages too long with several redundant passages.

BOTTOM LINE: Jackson is a talented author with many illustrious works to her credit; this is not one of them. She's in danger of becoming generic in a genre in which she was once a leader. show less

Good, not great story of several missing girls, all from the same small college, and all took the same courses - - one of them a class on vampires. Kristi decides to investigate the story as she plans to become a crime writer after college.