The River Girls by Melinda Woodhall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Book Synopis: “When the body of a missing girl washes up on the banks of the Willow River, the killing is linked to two cold case murders, and the investigation must uncover the twisted motive of a serial killer before he kills again.
Still reeling after her sister’s brutal murder, grief-stricken Eden Winthrop has returned to Willow Bay, where she runs the Mercy Harbor Foundation, a safe haven for victims of violence.
When a teenage trafficking victim disappears from a shelter run by her foundation, Eden is drawn into the search for the sadistic killer. The hunt becomes personal when Eden’s niece is abducted just as the body of yet another victim is discovered in a local river.
In a desperate effort to save her niece, Eden must partner with the small-town police force that had failed to save her sister. And to catch the killer, she realizes she must trust the one man she vowed to never forgive and summon the strength to face her deepest fears.”
I appear to be an anomaly on this title. While I thought it was OK, I had more qualms with it than positives. Some of my problems could have been solved with a better editor. Others were more fundamental in the execution and character development throughout the story.
First, I am not an English teacher, but sometimes, I do feel like a grammar snob. Verb tenses should be consistent and need to match their subject. This was a topic I messed up a lot in high school, but mostly corrected in college. I still struggle with this from time to time in my own writing, but would hope for a published novel, an editor would help get it right.
While on the subject of an editor, they also may help make sure you don’t accidently change the name of your main character to the name of her late sister in the middle of the book. Granted, it may have only been in one or two places, but it still takes a reader out of the situation to correct the error.
As for the main character, Eden, she read like a victim. I am good with a flawed hero, but I have to be able to believe they are a hero with flaws. Eden was not a real person to me, her multiple parts didn’t create a truth. She has had some trauma in her life and struggles with panic disorder (as a result of this?), but somehow manages to run a foundation for battered women. When a man on the street gets angry and loud, she hyperventilates and needs a calmer man to help her collect herself. Not very believable to me.
Like many of the mysteries and thrillers I have read this year, this book touches on several ills plaguing society: drug abuse, prostitution, mental health, human trafficking, failures in the legal system, domestic abuse, and police corruption. These are all important issues which need to be addressed. While these issues are not entertaining, using novels to highlight the problems allows us a common language to discuss them. In this case, I would have liked to see the book better executed to give us that shared language.
I did appreciate Leo and his backstory. It may have been shared in an overly forced way, but I did think it was interesting and made his character stronger.
I am not sure where the author plans to take the series (if she does continue the Mercy Harbor Thrillers), but I would probably be willing to give the next book a try.
My thanks to BookSirens for my advanced digital copy, this review is entirely mine and is left voluntarily.
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