Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain

So Saturday I moved on to book three in Chelsea Cain's Gretchen Lowell series, Evil at Heart. Holy moly! This is a seriously intense series and I just couldn't help but continue once I got started!

This third in the series takes place just two months after the events of Sweetheart. Gretchen Lowell, the famed Beauty Killer, is still on the run and Det. Archie Sheridan is in the psych ward recovering from an overdose and pain med addiction. The Beauty Killer task force has been brought back to track down Lowell, Portland's biggest celebrity criminal. But when a discovery at a truck stop is brought to their attention, they request Archie's help. Seems the crime scene is right up Lowell's alley and could mark her return.

Violent, gory, and shocking! If you're sensitive to these things, this is probably not the series for you. But, if you're looking for the kind of book that is guaranteed to keep you up all night, you might want to consider giving Cain a try. She's been compared to Thomas Harris and his Hannibal Lecter series. Fortunately, as I mentioned in my review of Cain's debut, she's not made us wait as long to get our fix on her series!

I'm seriously invested in these characters and their lives now. I want to know what Cain has in store for them next! Book four, The Night Season, is officially due out this week. It's a bit of a change of pace for the series. Lowell takes a backseat and readers unfamiliar with the series can pick up and start with this new one, which is (I'm reading it now) much less violent so far.

In an interesting note, Cain commented on Lowell's popularity as a character and the fact that readers (including me) refer to the books as the Gretchen Lowell series. Frankly, I'm just not sure what else to call them. Book four makes that a bit of a misnomer for sure!

I'll update you tomorrow The Night Season (because I'll certainly have finished it by then).