The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen

A Review by Wendy

4.5 Winning Debut Stars
* * * *1/2 

 Spoiler Free

Yes, this Major Romance reader is cleansing the palate...
No Cowboys or Alphas
No Swooning or Gahs...
This time a little Hard Core Mayhem...

It seems All to Many Times Now...
Things are Happening Again...

To the One who Knows how Horrific these Things can be...
No One Is Listening To Her...

No One is Paying Attention like they Should...
Because these Things keep Happening...
And She Knows it is only a Matter of Time...
For It will Come Again...

 
This had all the elements to cause continual reading...I took longer breaks at work... stayed up too late and got up early because I could not read this fast enough.

I have a history of being a Mystery reader so my mind was working from the start and had narrowed down what I thought all of the catches were...But then this new author would throw a few things out there to make me doubt myself and instincts...so good on her... because even though I was correct in the end...She had me going many times during the reading.

This was a gritty and intricate story and I think it showed off Joanna Schaffhausen talent well. 

A gifted copy was provided by St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for an honest review.

Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, MA, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only victim who lived.

When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday—the day she was kidnapped so long ago—Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her: the FBI agent who saved her from a killer’s closet all those years ago.

Agent Reed Markham made his name and fame on the back of the Coben case, but his fortunes have since turned. His marriage is in shambles, his bosses think he's washed up, and worst of all, he blew a major investigation. When Ellery calls him, he can’t help but wonder: sure, he rescued her, but was she ever truly saved? His greatest triumph is Ellery’s waking nightmare, and now both of them are about to be sucked into the past, back to the case that made them...with a killer who can't let go.