#BookReview: Unsub by Meg Gardiner

Sorry for falling off the planet last week. Time got away from me.

Unsub by Meg Gardiner, Narrated by Hillary Hubar
Audiobook Thriller 12 hours
Released June 2017
Amazon ♦ Goodreads

A riveting psychological thriller inspired by the never-caught Zodiac Killer, about a young detective determined to apprehend the serial murderer who destroyed her family and terrorized a city 20 years earlier.

Caitlin Hendrix has been a narcotics detective for six months when the killer at the heart of all her childhood nightmares reemerges: the Prophet. An UNSUB - what the FBI calls an unknown subject - the Prophet terrorized the Bay Area in the 1990s and nearly destroyed her father, the lead investigator on the case.

The Prophet's cryptic messages and mind games drove Detective Mack Hendrix to the brink of madness, and Mack's failure to solve the series of ritualized murders - 11 seemingly unconnected victims left with the ancient sign for Mercury etched into their flesh - was the final nail in the coffin for a once promising career.

Twenty years later, two bodies are found bearing the haunting signature of the Prophet. Caitlin Hendrix has never escaped the shadow of her father's failure to protect their city. But now the ruthless madman is killing again and has set his sights on her, threatening to undermine the fragile barrier she rigidly maintains, for her own protection, between relentless pursuit and dangerous obsession.

Determined to decipher the Prophet's twisted messages and stop the carnage, Caitlin ignores her father's warnings as she draws closer to the killer with each new gruesome murder. Is it a copycat, or can this really be the same Prophet who haunted her childhood? Will Caitlin avoid repeating her father's mistakes and redeem her family name, or will chasing the Prophet drag her and everyone she loves into the depths of the abyss?

My Thoughts:

This is one of those books with a trillion reviews so I am going to use this to my advantage and let my laziness take over and be super brief.

Unsub was pretty good but I didn’t fall in love with it like many a reader before me. To get truly wowed over I suggest you read The Fourth Monkey by J.D. Barker after this one (not before, definitely not before). The Fourth Monkey features the POV of the serial killer and it is truly chilling. It’s also very dark and demented. I loved that book but this so called “review” is about Unsub so enough about that.

I liked Unsub well enough, thus the 3 ½ stars, but I don’t know it seemed a little too clean for my taste. Almost like one of those semi-gritty serial killer shows on network tv. Maybe I read too much horror and perhaps that’s the reason but the kills didn’t hit hard enough and so much of it felt a little too familiar to me. I wanted something from the killer’s perspective but I never got it.

I wasn’t particularly emotionally invested in the characters either which is a bit of a shame. I liked them well enough but something was missing to make me feel and I just can’t explain it. I liked Caitlin, her boyfriend and her broken father but I didn’t feel any emotional pull towards them. With that said, there were several imaginative and creepy scenes that were set by the killer (bees! crows!) but it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more of that. It also ends with a cliffhanger that wasn’t very shocking to me but it didn’t piss me off so there is that because I typically despise cliffhangers. If you enjoy audio I would most definitely go with that option because the audio narrated by Hillary Huber works well with the action packed plot. Had I read this in paper I might’ve put it down and left it there for several months.

You Might Like This One If You're Into Serial Killers

(You know I won't judge you)