The Surviving Girls

Katee Robert

Montlake Romance

May 29, 2018

A fierce survivor and a fearless FBI agent battle a copycat serial killer in a gripping thriller from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Katee Robert.

Twelve years ago, Lei Zhang and her friend Emma Nilsson miraculously lived through the notorious Sorority Row Murders that left twenty-one of their sisters dead. Still wrestling with the trauma but finally out of the limelight, Lei and Emma are now devoted to helping other victims find closure. But most disturbing for Lei—beyond the gut-wrenching survivor guilt—is that the killer was her boyfriend. He’s behind bars, but she’ll never lower her guard again.

When a copycat killer targets Lei and Emma, FBI Agent Dante Young is put in charge of anticipating the sociopath’s every move. But what he doesn’t expect is his immediate and overpowering attraction to Lei. The closer they get to each other, the more desperate and terrifying the questions become: Who wants to finish what the killer started—and why?

Now Agent Young vows to protect Lei at all costs. If they have any chance of a future together, first they have to stay alive…

SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW

I expected to like, and maybe even love, this book. Katee Robert does an excellent job of writing romances, and I thought that would carry over to the romantic suspense genre. It doesn’t.

The Surviving Girls reads as if it were written very quickly with little thought given to motivations, details, or plausibility. Characters are lost track of, behave improbably when facing their worst nightmare come true, and lack substance. I felt as if I were reading a novel in which the author decided: let’s throw this in to see what happens. We never find out the “whys” or “hows” of several key incidents. The repetition is frequently mind-numbing. Research/plotting seemed minimal.

The romance aspect is an unbelievable love-at-first-sight scenario in which the FBI agent, Dante Young, becomes a muddle due to his immediate and overwhelming attraction to a victim/suspect and Lei Zhang forgets that the reality she’s been fearing is occurring because she is so fascinated by Dante. This fits the TSTL category.

I would like to say that the last 4% in which something actually happens saves the novel, but it doesn’t. Unless you’re a die-hard Katee Robert fan, I’d give this one a pass.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

rating: 

2 butterflies out of 5