February 19, 2019

Review: Blood Echo by Christopher Rice

Blood Echo (Burning Girl #2)
Author: Christopher Rice
Genre: Adult Mystery/Thriller
Release Date: February 19, 2019
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Description:

A conspiracy that promises bloodshed and the only woman who can stop it collide in the page-turning thriller by Christopher Rice, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Bone Music.

Kidnapped and raised by serial killers, Charlotte Rowe suffered an ordeal that made her infamous. Everyone in the world knew who she was. But no one in the world has any idea what she’s become…

Charlotte is an experiment. And a weapon. Enabled by a superpower drug, she’s partnered with a shadowy pharmaceutical company to hunt down and eliminate society’s most depraved human predators. But her latest mission goes off the rails in a horrifying way. Unsettled by her own capacity for violence, Charlotte wants some time to retreat so she can work on her new relationship with Luke, a sheriff’s deputy in the isolated Central California town she now calls home.

If only the threats hadn’t followed Charlotte there.

Something sinister is evolving in Altamira, California—a massive network of domestic terrorists with ties to Charlotte’s influential and corrupt employers. As a vast and explosive criminal conspiracy grows, the fate of Charlotte’s hometown hangs in the balance. With everyone she cares about in danger, Charlotte has no choice but to bring her powers home.

Charlotte Rowe has been triggered, and now she’ll have to take matters into her own powerful hands.
  


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40113384-blood-echo
 
Bone Echo is the thrilling second book in a genre-defying series that will appeal to readers of all kinds. I'm a big fan of the author and have read several of his other books. I've read the first book in the series and really liked it, so I was excited to see where this story would take us. I definitely wasn't disappointed - the author delivered another fantastic book for readers to lose themselves in. There were a couple small things that bothered me personally. The one that stood out the most was the author's writing style - namely the third person point of view. It's my least favorite - mostly due to the fact that we as readers can't connect as deeply with the main character. There are several major characters in this novel and I understand the choice to use the third person POV, but I (personally) would have loved it even more if it had been done in the first person from Charlotte's perspective. She's an awesome main character and I definitely wish I could have connected with her and gotten to know her better throughout the book. She has a very unique history and with all the craziness happening, it would've been great to get a front row seat to everything. The other thing that sort of bothered me were the multiple "mini" story lines that occur at the same time as the others and eventually come together in one way or another. It's a bit confusing at first, but once I got used to the writing it became easier to integrate the various plots into one major story line. 

As for the rest of the novel - it was fantastic and all that I had hoped for. As I mentioned, Charlotte is an awesome MC and I loved getting to know her even better. She continues to grow throughout the story and I liked watching her gain confidence and power. The secondary characters were well rounded, even though there were quite a few of them. They all had distinct personalities with quirks and flaws and helped flesh out the story line. The main plot of the novel wasn't exactly unique or wholly original - not much can be called that anymore. But the author found a way to take a couple of different plots and wound them together to create something new and fascinating. Like I said earlier - it's a genre-bending novel that is sure to appeal to fans of several different types of fiction. 
 

Christopher Rice is a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and a Bram Stoker Award finalist. His novels include Bone Music, the first novel in the Burning Girl series; A Density of Souls; The Heavens Rise; and The Vines. He is the head writer and an executive producer of The Vampire Chronicles, a television show based on the bestselling novels by his mother, Anne Rice, currently in development for Hulu.











 

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