Summary: Girls are being murdered in a small town. No one knows who the killer is and no one will feel safe until the killer is caught.

My Rating:
3/5

I ended up having a really weird time with this book and overall mixed feelings about it.

I liked the mystery. I didn't necessarily guess who the killer was early on but there was a point in the book where I decided that if the killer wasn't a certain character the story was going to really suck and the author did have that character as the murderer. It was exactly who the murderer needed to be and overall it was fine mystery. There were red herrings and misdirection but when the killer was revealed everything made sense.

The mystery was about the only thing I really liked in this book. There were multiple POV characters and I had a hard time connecting with any of them. We do get the killer's POV several times and, while I understood why they did what they did I also felt that hearing their thoughts on the murders took away the sympathy I might otherwise have had for the killer because of why they killed and the parts of the killing they most enjoyed.

This book has a lot of discussion about the way people look and their physical appearance. I am a plus sized woman and maybe I was just too close to the subject matter but this book bothered me. The killer tells us early on that they are killing "Heartstoppers" or, in other words, attractive women. This is a hugely important topic in the book but it also made me uncomfortable at times especially with all the judgment about people with less than perfect bodies or bodies altered to appear perfect. I sometimes felt the way the book focused on things like breasts being real or fake was a bit much and I felt like the book could have looked at the issues of appearance and beauty in a less gross way.

Another issue I had with this book was that pretty much all the men were terrible. I really hate books that show one gender or group of people all being awful. Some of it was necessary to the plot of the book but other times there was no reason for the men to be the way they were and it sometimes felt borderline man-hating. There is a man who abuses his wife. There are several adulterers. And, there are so many sexual assault perpetrators. I assume this was done to create suspects but that didn't change the fact I noticed it and was put off by the fact that even the male sheriff who is investigating the murders isn't a "good" guy.

If you like mysteries and thrillers this book might be worth a try. It wasn't a terrible book it was just a book that didn't mesh with my personal tastes. ( )

Couldn't decided whether to give this 2 stars or 3. It was an ok book. The killer seemed a little obvious to me, although attempts were made to cast others as suspects too.

About a third of the way through the book, there is a scene where Sandy goes to the house of Will, a guy she just met in a bar. I could swear I have read that exact same scene before. I couldn't decide if that meant I had read this book before and just forgot, or if that scene is just a cliche of dating.

A lot of characters to keep track of, and a lot of switching between viewpoints. I thought the relationship between Cal and Fiona was especially creepy, an a very disturbing way. It seems like there are a lot of dysfunctional people living in that little town. ( )

good mystery
pretty teenage girls — disappearing

Welcome to Torrance, Florida. Population: 4,160. As Sheriff John Weber would attest, the deadliest predators to date in his tiny hamlet were the alligators lurking in the nearby swamps. But that was before someone abducted and murdered a runaway teenage girl...and before the disappearance of popular and pretty Liana Martin. The pattern is chilling to Sandy Crosbie, the town's new high school English teacher. With a marriage on the rocks, thanks to her husband's online affairs, and a beautiful teenage daughter to protect, Sandy wishes she'd never come to the seemingly quiet town with shocking depths of scandal, sex, and brutality roiling beneath its surface. And as Sheriff Weber digs up more questions than answers in a dead-end investigation, one truth emerges: the prettiest ones are being targeted, the heartstoppers. And this killer intends to give them their due....

One of the few books that allowed the killer to sneak up on me. ( )

I picked it up out of desperation and while it held my interest, I found it too confusing and far-fetched. I donated it to the Homewood library. ( )