River of Wrath (St. Benedict, 2)
Rating: 5 out of 5
"When the dogs appear, death is near."
Leslie Moore is struggling to get through her last semester at St. Benedict High. Even her relationship with her boyfriend Derek is falling apart. But after receding floodwaters from the Bouge Falaya River expose the bones of a woman, Leslie becomes obsessed with tracking down the killer. Sightings of an apparition haunting The Abbey send Leslie and her friends back to the scene of the horrors from last Halloween, but no one is prepared for what they find. After a stranger--the handsome Luke Cross--arrives in town, another girl goes missing, and the sheriff suspects the newcomer is hiding something. Leslie believes the Deveraux family is connected to everything going wrong in St. Benedict. And she means to uncover the truth, no matter the cost. Not all secrets can be kept silent. Some eventually find their way home.
The first book in this series left me emotionally shaken for like a week after I finished it. So I have to admit I was glad this one seemed to be going in a slightly different direction. Don't get me wrong it was still an emotional ride, but the narrative choice this time didn't make it as intense to read. I had no desire to put this book down until it was finished. And I don't regret a second of the things I didn't get accomplished because of it.
Naturally the book starts off with another murder, a Jane Doe, whose identity is going to reveal a lot things best kept hidden. Leslie, Taylor, Kelly and Sara have banded together and become friends; each dealing with the grief and trauma of last Halloween in their own way. The bonds they have developed are tested with the arrival of Luke into town; a man with a lot of secrets of his own.
When I say the number of twists and turns in this book had me losing my mind... In retrospect each of them made perfect sense and were so obvious it hurt, but at the time it was like WHAT??!! Oh and to make this book better we have ghosts!!! The creep factor in this book is high and after all those reveals at the end I am going to need the next installment almost immediately in order to survive.
