Nov 30

Nov 30 The Wicked Hour

Best Audiobooks, Audiobooks, Fiction, Five Star Books, Mystery, Thrills & Chills, 2020 Best

Score: 4.5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for gifting me a review copy of The Wicked Hour by Alice Blanchard. It's out today!

This is the second in the Natalie Lockhart series, and I LOVED the first book Trace of Evil, so I jumped at the chance to read this one. Plus, I love a good police procedural and this one didn't disappoint.

This book is set at Burning Lake again, right after their month-long Halloween celebrations. A dead girl is found in a dumpster, naked. She has a strange tattoo and a violinist's callus under her chin, and Detective Lockhart sets about trying to solve the mystery of what happened to her.

The deeper she digs, the more horrifying the picture becomes. There is a series of murders and disappearances, but can she tie them together? And do they explain the disappearance of her own best friend all those years ago?

I love Natalie Lockhart’s character. She’s strong and determined but her grief and vulnerabilities aren’t glossed over, they’re an integral part of who she is and how she views the world.

I have chills all over again just thinking about the story and how it ends! If you're not planning on reading the first book then I feel like this works really well as a stand-alone, but there are spoilers for the first book, so just be aware of that going in. (And personally I think the first book is too good not to read anyway).

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Synopsis:

The day after Burning Lake’s notorious, debauched Halloween celebration, Detective Natalie Lockhart uncovers a heartbreaking scene―a young woman, dead and lying in a dumpster. There’s no clue to who she is, save for a mystifying tattoo on her arm, and a callus underneath her chin. She’s not from around here. No one knows who she is.

As Natalie retraces the young woman’s steps leading up to her death, she uncovers a deeper, darker horror―a string of murders and disappearances, seemingly unconnected, that may have ties to each other―and explain the abrupt disappearance of her best friend years ago.

As she digs deeper within the mind of the hunter, Natalie finds a darkness she could never have imagined. And as she draws closer to the truth, the killer is weaving a trap for her that may prove inescapable.