Archives for February 4, 2021

I voluntarily read an early copy of this book.

Who better to catch a murderer than a woman raised by one?

The beautiful young woman’s long black hair clings to her face like seaweed. As Nadine turns the body, she prays this will be different: but seeing the wounds, her prayers go unanswered. It’s just like the others. An exact match to her mother’s victims.

Keeping her head down and refusing to let anyone get close is Agent Nadine Finch’s atonement for never realising her mother Arleen was a serial killer. But when the body of a young woman is found drifting in the warm Sarasota Bay waters, right where Nadine grew up, the past she’s worked so hard to keep hidden comes calling.

Rushing to the scene, Nadine is the first to notice the circle carved around the girl’s ring finger. It’s the exact same marking Arleen left on all her victims. Suddenly, Nadine is a teenager again, watching her mother come home to their trailer in the middle of the night, covered in blood.

With a heartbroken family reeling, and no witnesses or forensic evidence, Nadine has no choice but to face her demons and visit her mother in prison. When her mother whispers a name Nadine hasn’t heard for years, the case takes a terrifyingly personal turn, and returning home, the bag of bloodied clothes left on Nadine’s bed tells her someone is watching her every move…

With her dark family history out in the open, it’s not long before suspicion falls on Nadine herself. As her team turn against her, the closer she gets to her mother and this case, the more danger she’s in. Time is running out. Can she catch the killer—or will she be the next victim of this dark family legacy?

Terror from start to finish! With the first book in her brand new Agent Nadine Finch series Jenna Kernan makes a solid debut into a more diabolical genre than I typically read her in. With A KILLER’S DAUGHTER we are quickly thrust right into the heart of a copycat killer who is preying on a forensic psychologist by repeating the crimes her serial killer mother tormented her youth with. The story was quick to draw me in and had a solid foundation, but to have me all in I needed it to be faster paced with more edge of my seat suspense and less core characters to distract from the ongoing tension. A solid story with a satisfyingly sinister follow through left me hungry for more of Nadine in the series yet to come.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a mystery interwoven with past terror and current killings as the characters ease their way under our skin.