Stolen Angels by Rita Herron Also by this author: The Silent Dolls, Wildflower Graves, The Burning Girls, Frozen Souls
Series: Detective Ellie Reeves #5
Also in this series: The Silent Dolls, Wildflower Graves, The Burning Girls, Frozen Souls
Published by Bookouture on 27th January 2022
Genres: Crime, Suspense, Thriller
Pages: 448
Format: eARC
Source: from Netgalley
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Amazon Kindle
Twisting her hands together, she bites back a sob. She only turned her back for a second, and then her daughter was gone. Every mother in town would be hugging their children tighter tonight.
Lara is baking cupcakes when her daughter Ava runs to catch the school bus just one block away. Chasing after her, Lara sees the bus tumbling past, and waves. But Ava never turns up at school.
Detective Ellie Reeves is in a race against time to find her––in missing child cases, every second counts. Searching the small town of Crooked Creek, she finds the child’s bunny in the local park, the toy Ava carried around everywhere. Did Ava ever get on the bus?
While Ellie works around the clock, a local reporter gets a message: There are others missing girls out there. Digging into previous cases, Ellie discovers that another girl went missing on the same day the previous year. How many more children could there be?
Ellie is certain that the date means something––and that the person who sent the message is the key. But the community is up in arms, with everyone worried that their daughter will be next and blaming Ellie. The pressure is mounting, and time is running out to bring Ava home. Can Ellie solve the toughest case of her career––and save Ava––before it’s too late?
thank you to Bookouue for letting me take part in this tour and for my copy of this book via NetGalley. This is the 5th book in the Detective Reeves series but all books could be read as a standalone.
This case had me on edge from the very beginning. While I am not a mother, I cannot think of anything worse than your child being abducted. It seems like the cruellest thing someone could do to another human. I felt so much for those parents of the missing girls. My, heart breaks for them.
The story is full of suspense and tension. Who took these girls? Why did they take them? Will Ellie and the team find them in time? All these questions build up as you read page after page hoping against hope that the girls will be returned to their families.
I really enjoyed the short chapters. It made it very easy to read one more, and then one more and before you know if you’ve read half the book! I enjoyed seeing both sides of the story. Flicking between the investigation and seeing what was happing with the missing girls.
Rita shows us in this book how grief can affect people in different ways. You could feel the anguish coming off the page in this book.
This was a great addition to the Detective Ellie Reeves series. I feel like I know Ellie, Cord and Derrick well now and can tell how they will react to certain situations. I look forward to seeing them again in the next book.
About Rita Herron
USA Today Bestselling and award-winning author Rita Herron fell in love with books at the ripe age of eight when she read her first Trixie Belden mystery. But she didn’t think real people grew up to be writers, so she became a teacher instead. Now she writes so she doesn’t have to get a real job.
With over ninety books to her credit, she’s penned romantic suspense, romantic comedy, and YA novels, but she especially likes writing dark romantic suspense and crime fiction set in small southern towns.
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@bookouture Thanks so much for the great review!
@ritaherron Thanks so much!