My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Content: Strong language, Sex trafficking of young girls
When the body of a
teenage Ojibwe girl washes up on the shore of an island in Lake
Superior, the residents of the nearby Bad Bluff reservation whisper that
it was the work of a deadly mythical beast, the Windigo, or a vengeful
spirit called Michi Peshu. Such stories have been told by the Ojibwe
people for generations, but they don’t explain how the girl and her
friend, Mariah Arceneaux, disappeared a year ago. At the request of the
Arceneaux family, private investigator Cork O’Connor takes on the case.
But
on the Bad Bluff reservation, nobody’s talking. Still, Cork puts enough
information together to find a possible trail. He learns that the old
port city of Duluth is a modern-day center for sex trafficking of
vulnerable women, many of whom are young Native Americans. As the
investigation deepens, so does the danger.
Yet Cork holds tight
to his higher purpose—his vow to find Mariah, an innocent
fifteen-year-old girl whose family is desperate to get her back. With
only the barest hope of saving her from men whose darkness rivals that
of the legendary Windigo, Cork prepares for an epic battle that will
determine whether it will be fear, or love, that truly conquers all.
I haven't really bothered to write many reviews for the books in this series because I just didn't want to spend time on reviews for books that I find pretty mediocre. I enjoyed the first few books in this series and rated them 3.5 and 4 stars, but at some point, the series took a downhill turn and has never gotten back to where it was for me. Mostly I rate these 3 stars now for a few reasons, with this one being the first I've rated only 2. One reason is, with the exception of Henry, that I do not like the characters a whole lot. I find them annoying at times and unrealistic. Cork is a contradiction when it comes to being an ex-police officer/detective and his views on certain things. They don't make sense and don't jive with his actions. His wife in the first half of the series was never a very likable character to me. His kids can also be annoying. Jenny in particular is insufferable at times, especially in this book, where she repeatedly inserts herself where she doesn't need to be, and then in the end is traumatized by her own actions, which left me with little sympathy for her. All she needs to do is remember who that person was and everything they did and she should be just fine, but knowing this series it will take way too long for this to happen.
Another reason these books no longer rate very high for me is that the mysteries are never hard to figure out, in fact, sometimes there is little to no mystery to solve. It's always the obvious solution, and the characters come off as a little dumb for not knowing. And then there is the fact that the books have begun to feel like they are the author's soapbox. Now, I don't necessarily think that authors believe everything their characters believe, or that just because they write something in a book that they have an agenda, but at some point, I became aware that every single bad person in these books seemed to have the same political views. Now, I don't care what the political views are one way or another, but the way this is being done annoys me because it isn't realistic. There are good and bad people in every group, in every walk of life, and these books would be much more realistic if they showed that instead of pointing the finger at only one of them. If we could just have good mysteries instead of agendas, it would be great.
Then, yet another thing about this series that annoys me at times is the author's writing style. He sometimes describes things in too many words, or I guess you could say, in too flowery of a way. Near the end of this book there was a paragraph like this that really stood out to me. I won't quote it since I would have to go back and find it on the audio, but he talks about one of the sex traffickers going to prison and only having the ceiling of his cell to stare at instead of the sky. It was said in a really flowery way, when it could have been said in a much more simple way. There was no need to go all poetic about it.
Also, I'm going to interject here that at some point people must take responsibility for themselves, instead of blaming other people for the ills in their lives. I almost decided to quit this series after this book, and I still might, but I only have a few of them left, so I may read those just to finish out the books that are already written.
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