Digital Reads Reviews

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My review

I have been sitting on this review for the past 3 days. I didn’t want to review this book. If I put my words down in the blogosphere, it becomes true for me. There is proof. There is a deep rooted story behind this, my saga, if you will. I will try and keep it short.

The history of this series is truly a saga, not the family kinds, but a tale of murder started in the first book The Fourth Monkey, a history of mutilation, first the ears then the eyes, the tongue and followed by the death (body). Sounds gruesome? That is awesome!

This is 4MK, a.k.a Anton Bishop, a killer whose sense of justice is skewered… Killing the children kills the family… And he went on a spree in book1. He built his fame, got caught and managed to escape, with Detective Sam Porter searching for him all over the world. I actually rooted for his escape!!

In this book too, the old gang is back with Porter, Nash, Kloz and Clare. There are FBI additions with Poole, and Sophie from Missing Children. The author J D Barker has done it again. This time he has run two parallel stories, separated the detectives going on different tracks, and connected the two damn right in the middle. At nearly 50% of the book!!

My heartbeat 💜 which was going beep – do – beep, beep – do – beep suddenly went beep-beep, beep-beep. The 4MK who was in the background in this book, suddenly pushed his way through and laid his hands on the foreground of this story. And he is back! The fourth monkey strikes again, yeah baby!!

It is funny that I am rooting for a serial killer. But actually I am rooting for the excitement, the thrill, the need for 4MK not to get caught so that the series can continue, and I can read the next book by J D Barker.

There is a race against time to get to the life of girls before their death. There is tension, there is stress, there is adrenaline, there is gasping, but all in a good way (not the heart attack-y kind)

But all that ends when the book crosses the mid mark, then it becomes all about the past of 4MK, his family, his connections to past and present, his plans for the future and it ends in a huge cliffhanger! Nooooo!!! The story drags and ends in me feeling lost, incomplete, with too many things happening at the end. The author makes sure there will be a next book.

This is the book I had been waiting for since I read The Fourth Monkey. 4MK is the only one who could make my heart beat faster!! The first half took me 2 hours to read, the second half 2 days!! I am beyond crushed!! I hope the next book in the series is better.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and publisher, and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating : 3 stars

About the Author

J. D. BARKER is the international best-selling author of Forsaken, a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Debut Novel. In addition, he has been asked to coauthor a prequel to Dracula by the Stoker family. Barker splits his time between Englewood, Florida, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Book blurb

Detective Porter and the team have been pulled from the hunt for Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, by the feds. When the body of a young girl is found beneath the frozen waters of Jackson Park Lagoon, she is quickly identified as Ella Reynolds, missing three weeks. But how did she get there? The lagoon froze months earlier. More baffling? She’s found wearing the clothes of another girl, missing less than two days. While the detectives of Chicago Metro try to make sense of the quickly developing case, Porter secretly continues his pursuit of 4MK, knowing the best way to find Bishop is to track down his mother. When the captain finds out about Porter’s activities, he’s suspended, leaving his partners Clair and Nash to continue the search for the new killer alone.

Obsessed with catching Bishop, Porter follows a single grainy photograph from Chicago to the streets of New Orleans and stumbles into a world darker than he could have possibly imagined, where he quickly realizes that the only place more frightening than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came.

Product Details

Publication date : 10th July, 2018

Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Hartcourt

Language : English

Available on Amazon

I am beyond crushed….

49 Responses

        1. Thank you Robbie… Would you like to do an author spotlight on my group on Facebook? This weekend? Well you will have to join my group 😉 and I have not grilled you on this blog tour? 😉

          1. Join the group Digital Reads Alcove, we are a group of authors and readers and poets and writers. Every week we have an author spotlight, some of us who are lively participate, ask questions. Whenever you come online answer them. As we are all from different time zones

  1. Oh my gosh what an intense review. You had my heart beating fast! Lol.
    I really hope the next one is better too. When you’re all excited for a book you want it to be at least almost as good as you expected!

    1. I waited for the book for a year. When the killer made his appearance, I was screaming in excitement and then it all washed away like the waves receding from the beach

  2. What a great review! It’s so disappointing when you’re waiting for a book, and it’s not what you hoped for. But hopefully the next book provides everything you hoped for. I think I’ll wait until your review of that before diving in this series. 😉💙

          1. Ah crap! That’s even worse. I hate that so much. Ugh, well keep your expectations as low as you can (Almost impossible, I know), and hopefully the next book will be the surprise you are hoping for!

  3. Sounds like a pretty good series, but maybe not for me. I’ll have to check them out on Goodreads. You never know! Great review! 😉❤

    1. I hate them too, this had a story but to me it felt like ending was the beginning of another story.
      I wish the author’s would say ‘what happened last season’ or ‘previously on the first book’
      I read so many books but I don’t remember the characters later. I was totally lost in the first chapter, though I did remember the serial killer 4MK 😉😉😂😂

      1. Notes! I forget things like you wouldn’t believe… I write down a lot of stuff I don’t need to but every now and then I’m thankful for treating myself like a child. 😆

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