Review: Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier

This book was so deliciously dark.

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier
Mystery/Thriller 
Released June 2018
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When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong--one of the most popular girls in school--disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.

But fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser--now a detective with Seattle PD--finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.

To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.

While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.

How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it?

My Thoughts:

This book is a few different things and miraculously I loved them all. It’s a mystery, it’s an acclimating to prison life tale, and it’s a love story gone about as wrong as a love story can go! It’s dark and it’s addictive and it’s getting all the stars I have to give.

Georgina, Angela and Kaiser (Kai) were the best of friends in high school but when Georgina starts seeing an older guy, everything gets all messed up. One of them dies, one later goes to prison and another ends up being the arresting officer. There’s also a recent spate of atrocious serial killings that may be connected to the past murder . . .

The big draw here is finding out the why just as much as the who. Why did one of these friends die? What really happened that night? Who is keeping secrets? And, who is killing innocents in the modern day? Also, why is Angela such a bitch? That one is never answered, she just is! None of it makes sense until the very end where it all comes together in a glorious rush of craziness that worked for me in every way.

Most of these characters are imperfect and awful, cruel, jealous, vindictive and selfish but I could not, did not want, to stop reading for a moment. This book is so addictive. If you like this stuff, you MUST read it.

“Because that smell – of rotting flesh, of rotting soul – is you.”