Blood Dreams

I confess that I do not usually like books about any kind of paranormal activity. I am not the audience for this book. Nevertheless, I defend my right to bitch about it.

Dani Justice has a gift. She has dreams. These dreams reveal something about the future, but not usually exactly. She has to interpret them, to understand what is important and what is not. She is surrounded, in this novel, by others with other psychic gifts, each one different, and one person who is able to determine if a person is psychic or not but who is not himself psychic. These people are members of one of two teams: one governmental and one private. Both hunt serial killers through the use of their powers.

There is no real policework done here. Everything is show more learned from various messages received by team members. There is a lot of angst, deep emotion, and actual hurt - caused by an evil psychic who is (we think) outside the group. There is also some love interest. What there isn't is anything real, anything not a cliche, not predictable. Oh, and this is part of a series! You have to read the next book to find out what happens next. There is zero chance that I will bother. show less

Blood Dreams
3 Stars

With the SCU under scrutiny by the new FBI director, SAC Noah Bishop needs to keep a low profile. But when a vicious predator targeting young women relocates from Boston to a small town in Georgia, Bishop enlists the aid of Haven, a private security firm employing investigators with psychic abilities. While Dani Justice's dream visions of the killer provide her with an edge, she and her team soon realize that it may not be enough as the hunters have become the hunted.

Series note: This book begins a new trilogy within the larger Special Crimes series. While the focus is on a new case, several characters from previous books play pivotal roles.

Although the series is classified as romantic suspense, it is actually more show more of a paranormal thriller with some minor romantic elements. This book falls solidly in the thriller category as the second-chances romance between Dani and her high-school sweetheart turned-sheriff, Marcus Purcell, is quite bland. Their relationship is underdeveloped and lacking in both chemistry and emotion. Their interactions are more akin to those of friends than lovers.

In contrast, the suspense elements are gripping as the killer is particularly disturbing, and Hooper skillfully weaves the tension surrounding the dream sequences within the narrative to keep the reader guessing. Moreover, the final showdown is intense with an excellent twist at the end.

All in all, an intriguing beginning to the new trilogy and it will be interesting to see how the twist plays out in subsequent installments. show less

I don't _like_ serial killer stories - not even ones full of psychics. But I can't stop reading the Bishop stories. This one's pretty good - not too gory (one really nasty scene, revisited a couple times), interesting characters, good romance. On the other hand, the repeated vision that drives the story turns out to be almost entirely wrong - well, symbolic rather than literal, at least. And the end isn't the end - they've been tricked (which we're told over and over throughout the story, but the trick is bigger than you think). The annoying thing is, I think I remember another Bishop story that went the same way, but none of them mention it. Bah. I hope it was one I reviewed so I don't have to reread it. But I do have the second book show more in this series handy - don't know yet if it's a duology or a trilogy that hasn't had the last published yet. show less

This book went so fast that I didn't even get around to putting in that it was a current read. That's pretty normal for favorite fiction authors however. Blood Dreams is similar to the other books in this series so it didn't disappoint. In fact, there was a slight twist that I wasn't expecting and the set-up for a sequel was a little more obvious than usual but this part of the story did have a definite conclusion. However, as much as I love the Bishop/FBI/Haven books, for me The Wizard of Seattle is still my all-time favorite of Hooper's books.

Dani Justice has pre-cognitive dreams or rather nightmares. She has been having this particular one for some months now. She has come home to her hometown just outside of Atlanta, Georgia to spend time with her identical twin sister, Paris. Dani and Paris have known since they were kids that they have more than just a special "twin" connection. They each have their own psychic abilities that are enhanced when they work together. They have joined a private organization (Haven) run by John and Maggie Garret that consists of many different types of psychics. This organization was started as an idea of FBI Special Agent Noah Bishop. Bishop is the head of the Special Crimes Unit that also has primarily psychics working for it. Bishop and his show more team had been tracking a very evil serial killer in Boston who killed a dozen women. The last one killed was the daughter of a US Senator who has offered his help and resources to Bishop and who very much wants this killer caught if he has to do it himself. I've been reading this series from the very beginning and love the idea that she is doing a trilogy. I loved this book, enjoyed catching up with some past favorite characters and enjoyed meeting the new characters. I even liked the "cliffhanger". I hope that the rest of the series continues to explore the new characters and lets us know what's going on with the rest of the unit. If you like good suspense, I highly recommend this book. show less

Tenth book in Kay Hooper’s Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series about a group of FBI psychics that solve serial killer crimes. Dani Justice returns to her hometown of Venture, Georgia to spend time with her twin Paris, following the sister's ugly divorce. Both of the twins have psychic abilities. Dani can dreamwalk, allowing her to see the future, and Paris can control electricity. There are grisly murders in Venture, by a serial killer the SCU has tracked from Boston. Women from the small town are missing and the remains of some are chopped to bits and displayed to leave a message. The local Sheriff, Mark Purcell, was once Dani's sweetheart, and is open to the SCU's unconventional investigation. Dani is wracked with guilt as she is show more unable to interpret her recurring dream that an SCU Agent is kidnapped, imprisoned in the basement of a burning building, with the serial killer setting a trap for Bishop and his agents. I felt that the character development was weak in this one, with too much focus on the identity, motives, and powers of the killer. The continuous revisitation of Dani's morphing dream was tiresome. show less

Meh. Maybe I'm tired of reading this series -- set in trilogies. Maybe I don't like all the "who's on first" feel. Maybe I don't like the "this is the mother of all monsters" build up to "he's so ordinary...and not the monster we're looking for." Whatever it was, I wasn't impressed by #10 in the Bishop series. Also, don't be fooled by the "romance" bookshelf. There's maybe five sentences devoted to the romance in the story.