I am a sucker for a series with a strong, capable woman. Add the fact that she’s a mom on a mission? I’m alway sold. I’m easy…always have been. To catch you up, the Stillhouse Lake series is about a woman, Gina Royal, who comes home to find out that her husband was a serial killer and that he had been killing people under her nose for years (in a sound proof hobby room in the garage). People did not believe that she wasn’t aiding him, so when she was finally acquitted, she has to take her children and run because “good people on both sides” (aka other killers who are angry that she testified against her husband and victim’s families) are trying to find her and kill her. Changing her name to Gwen Proctor, she and her children reinvent themselves and try to keep themselves hidden from those that mean her harm. And soooo much harm comes at this family for several books.
Now in book four, people have known who Gwen once was (that was revealed books ago) and most of them are letting her live her life (kinda sorta but not really–but I guess it was better than when they were writing DIE on their door in red paint? PROGRESS!). But while she’s been trying therapy for all of them and trying to set a new normal for her children, they are severly damaged from all the experiences from their past. Gwen realizes that she needs to stop being proud and do what’s best for her kids…but first? She has to take a case that involves a missing college kid and a crazy ass cult that is most definitely going to put her entire family in the utmost danger. Listen, you can’t relocate without money, I get it. She was a housewife before she became whatever it is that she is (basically a bounty hunter private investigator) so I’m sure that the job hunt might be a little more difficult especially since she has a very “special set of skills”–I mean she hands the FBI their ass on how capable she is, but uh, maybe selling real estate or working for the postal service might be less harrowing for the kids…I’m just saying…
Book four didn’t disappoint. They’re all basically the same, and yet fast paced enough, and the evil men are different enough that it’s comforting when she tears them down and destroys them. Her love for her children and the man in her life, Sam are equally fun to read about; especially when she has to go all John Rambo and singlehandedly save them book by book. She’s focused on never being vulnerable again and yet being vulnerable enough to mother her kids and experience love with a normal human and not one who got their rocks off by cutting the skin off of women. Skip these books if you can’t handle depravity. While this one wasn’t gory like the previous books, all of the books deal with subjugating women in one way or another and having those victims either liberating themselves or getting help from Gwen Proctor and company. I will look forward to Rachel Caine’s next book and Gwen Proctor kicking ass again.
