RITA Reader Challenge Review

All the Dead Girls by Rita Herron

F

Genre: Romantic Suspense, Romance

Archetype: Cop/Sheriff

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by chezamanda. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.

The summary:

When a violent storm hits Graveyard Falls, it unearths the unimaginable: skeletons of teenage girls, each dressed in white and holding a candle. It’s clear to FBI agent Beth Fields that this is the work of a long-standing killer—but could it be the one she escaped years ago? She has no memory of the man who held her captive and murdered her friend. But even though someone was jailed for the crime, she’s always feared that the real killer is still out there…waiting and watching.

Ian Kimball never believed his stepfather was guilty of Beth’s kidnapping or the slaying of two local girls. Now Graveyard Falls’s sheriff, he’s determined to catch the true perpetrator. And when more young women go missing, he realizes he needs Beth’s help. She is nothing like Ian expected, and everything he desires. But if they have any hope of finally ending the killer’s reign of terror, Beth and Ian will need to put everything aside, including their past, their mistrust, and their growing attraction…

Here is chezamanda's review:

TW for victim blaming and discussion of rape, kidnapping, suicide, and sexual assault. 

As someone who likes a good suspenseful story and is a fan of the My Favorite Murder podcast (hey, fellow Murderinos!), I was very on board for this story when I saw the summary. Women in law enforcement stopping serial killers? Yes, please! Maybe this will fill The Fall-shaped hole in my heart, I thought. When I found out that I’d gotten my first pick of the RITA nominees, I was even more pumped.

And then I read the book.

The so-called suspense is nowhere to be found. It did not keep me turning the digital pages on my Kindle. There is a lot going on and a considerable amount of backstory revealed, but it didn’t hold my interest like other crime thrillers have. Every time I checked how far along I was in the book, I was surprised that I was not as far as I expected. It was a real slog. I picked out the real killer early on, so the red herrings came off more as padding and were sometimes confusing. A few times I had to go back into my notes and the bookmarked sections to see if I had missed something or just assumed wrong.

Despite the knowing their histories, Beth and Ian fell flat as characters. There is a lot of telling instead of showing in this book, specifically in terms of this growing attraction between the two (more on that in a sec). There is an absence of character development or any real sense of who they are beyond Beth’s horrible childhood and Ian’s anger at the legal system and guilt over Beth’s past. Beth is Broken™ because her mother abandoned her and she went to a foster home where the husband abused her and other girls (both physically and sexually), and then during her escape, she and her foster sister, Sunny, were abducted by a serial killer. Sunny is never found, but Beth (then JJ) survived albeit with amnesia. She became an agent to help other missing kids in the hopes of healing those wounds and maybe to find out what happened to her foster sister. Her emotional state is precarious at best, and I really don’t buy that she would be allowed to continue on that case given her involvement.

Show Spoiler
At one point, the serial killer breaks into Beth’s rental and leaves a few pages of her high school diary in an envelope:

Ian yanked on gloves, took the envelope from her, and then reached for the page. “Let me send this to the lab. Maybe he left his prints on it.”

Beth clutched the page back to her chest. “These are my private thoughts. I don’t want anyone to read them.”

For a heartbeat, they stared at each other. Ian had no idea what she’d written on that page, but reading it would be a violation of her privacy.

“What if there’s some evidence on it?” he asked.

Her hand trembled. “You’re right. I’ll have the lab analyze it.”

Beth, get yourself together and do your job. If you’re worried about people reading your high school diary fifteen-some years later, you’ve got your priorities out of whack. This is a murder case and a girl is missing, but you’re worried about someone looking at your diary? Please. Later in the story, when the “romance” aspect is addressed, the two are in bed and find out another girl has gone missing. What is Beth’s first thought? Not “oh shit, we’ve got work to do!” like one would expect – it’s how she wishes she could stay in bed with Ian and “not to think about another missing teenager.” In the words of Las Culturistas: I don’t think so, honey!

If you are sensitive or potentially triggered by talk of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and mentions of blood, you will want to avoid this one. These two so-called professionals repeatedly victim-blame the people involved in the case. Granted, I know this does happen in real life, but this is fiction and I’d like to be on my hero and heroine’s sides. Being shitty to abuse victims is not how you win me over as a reader.

Ian’s father was alleged to have raped a student whom he had counseled and who later died of an apparent suicide. The father was implicated in Beth and Sunny’s abduction as well as the murders of other girls due to some shady legal business, and sent to prison. He and Beth go to look into his case to find anything related to theirs:

“What do you know about Kelly’s suicide?” Ian asked.

“I heard all the rumors, but I didn’t know what to believe. Someone said she had emotional problems, that she’d run away before. One of the cheerleaders claimed she’d had oral sex with the coach.

Shock knifed through Ian. “I don’t believe that. It sounds like she was needy and wanted attention.”

“Maybe so.”

“But the parents bought her story and blamed my dad,” Ian said bitterly.

Uh? Okay? This is one of the many reasons neither Ian nor Beth should be involved with this case. It is too personal for both of them, and the fact that Ian is not on the dead victim’s side makes him seem like a really terrible officer. I know you don’t want your dad to be a rapist – who would? But Ian clearly cannot treat this case objectively and needs to hand it to someone else.

They later meet a missing girl’s mother who is clearly drunk, sporting bruises, and in an abusive relationship:

Beth sized up Prissy’s mother and boyfriend within seconds of entering the trailer. Sadly, the mother was an alcoholic and desperate enough for male attention to allow him to smack her around.

WHAT. IS. WRONG. WITH. YOU.

People who believe that abuse victims allow it to happen to themselves make my head want to explode. I don’t want my heroine to waffle between wanting justice and blaming the victims. That’s just nonsense, especially when the heroine is a survivor of child abuse. She should know more than anyone that people get stuck in these situations that are very difficult to get out of, and should be sympathetic to Prissy’s mother. Hard fail, Beth.

As for our hero, Ian, he went from okay to an equally emotionally unstable mess like Beth. At one point, he threatens to go to her boss to have her removed from the case because he’s so worried about her personal safety. While I don’t disagree that she shouldn’t be on this case, that’s a paternalistic dick move. This also clashes with his telling her how “strong” she is and how her past doesn’t have to define her present. When she eventually is told that she has to return to her field office, Ian is impressed by her determination to disobey that order. Make up your mind, Ian. He has other moments where he’s angry at her over stuff that is clearly not her fault or not something that she did to explicitly hurt him. This isn’t a good selling point for the love interest. He just comes off as a jackass who can’t figure out what he wants beyond banging the heroine into mental wellness.

There is absolutely zero chemistry between these two characters. Sure they have a shared history where they had something of a crush on each other as kids, but that is the extent of it. As a reader, I’m told that they’re attracted to each other, but I don’t buy it. Both notice that they have pants feelings and then immediately reprimand themselves for doing so because they’re broken or whatever. Yawn. Their first kiss (a good 70% into the book, might I add) is so underwhelming that it’s easy to miss. Beth is stranded on a mountain ledge after nearly being hit by their suspect, so Ian goes down with a rope to help retrieve her:

“I hate heights.”

Ian cupped her face between his hands. “You can do anything, Beth. You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met. Just don’t look down.” He gave her a deep kiss on the lips, and thoughts of the ledge faded.

Aside from her “reeling” from the kiss in the next paragraph, that is it. I want my first kiss to be exciting! Given that she’s on the side of a freaking mountain being rescued, it should be pretty thrilling. I want to have her whole body react, to know what it feels like when he kisses her. I want to get a flutter in my stomach, and that sentence does not deliver. I had the same complaint about their love scene. There’s too much description of the act itself and very little in the way of emotion in what should be an emotionally-charged moment. Also the use of “erotic” in describing how they touch or kiss each other came off very smarmy. Does anyone actually think of that word when they’re in the heat of the moment? I certainly haven’t. This is a serious peeve of mine in writing.

The romance is almost an afterthought and I rolled my eyes through most of it, and by the end I wanted to throw my Kindle against the wall (okay, one of the many times I felt the need to do this throughout the book). My friends received some very angry, all caps texts instead. I haven’t read much romantic suspense, but I’d expect there to be more attention paid to the romance when it’s labeled as such. At least make the kiss earlier on in the story, even if they don’t go to the Bone Zone until later.

Ending
And that ending – are you kidding me? After they go through a pretty fucked up experience on the case, Beth returns to Knoxville. Ian then tracks her down while she’s on a run and PROPOSES TO HER. Down on one knee, ring box in hand and everything. Beth hesitates for about a half second, reiterating her how broken and unworthy of love she is, but accepts:

Ian slid the ring on her finger, then cupped her face between his hands and kissed her with all the love in his heart.

Beth poured herself into the kiss. The bleakness she’d felt for years faded away as love and hope budded in her heart.

She’d never settled anywhere. Never had a real home.

The sun beamed down on her sparkling off a shiny penny on the ground, and Sunny’s whisper of approval tickled her ear. Sunny wanted Beth to fulfill her dreams for both of them.

And she would.

She was going to make a family with Ian.

Marriage is not the antidote for severe trauma. They both need to be in counseling before they jump into that kind of serious relationship. Ugh, this book.

There was a big red flag early in the book that didn’t concern the central characters. One of the three black people in this small town is the café owner, Cocoa. Cocoa has “dark chocolate skin” and the town “wasn’t sure” about her until, I dunno, I guess she proved herself useful to them? The same went for their Native American deputy, Clint Whitehorse. I guess this town is racist, but only if you’re of service to them, then you’re acceptable. Where Cocoa has skin that matches her poorly-chosen name and happily dishes out food for the town, Deputy Whitehorse is a good tracker who is “quiet and intense.” If you have to rely on racist stereotypes, just don’t write characters of color in your story. Better yet – read up on why this is unacceptable.

Can I also add that I never want to see the word “unsub” ever again? It popped up so often in this book that I thought the author had just watched a Criminal Minds marathon before writing. From what I’ve gathered through asking for help in the My Favorite Murder Facebook group and some online searches, it is used by federal agents although I couldn’t get a good feel for how frequently it’s employed. If anyone knows, please weigh in because this felt really repetitive.

What had sounded like total catnip for me turned out to be an aggravating mess of a book. It came very close to being a DNF a number of times. I thought that it might turn itself around if I soldiered through and NOPE. Just piled on more headache-inducing nonsense. Thankfully, Shira Glassman’s Knit One, Girl Two came out right after I finished it. Perfect palate cleanser.

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All the Dead Girls by Rita Herron

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Add Your Comment →

  1. Donna Marie says:

    Oh dear… I’m just so sorry you had to go through this. Thanks for coming out swinging. We appreciate you taking one for the team.

  2. Carol S says:

    Hope “budded” in her heart? Kaithankxbai.

  3. Jazzlet says:

    I’d of thought ‘reeling’ while on a ledge up a mountain was iffy …

  4. OKCReader405 says:

    Many thanks. Yes, I’d have jumped on this based on the summary as well. There are too many other books I’d rather devote the time to (Hello there, The Silent Corner)rather than discover this as DNF. I have no hesitation to dump a book if it doesn’t grab me (I’m looking at you Stars of Fortune).

  5. Ans says:

    Wow. Some of the bits you quoted sound like a parody oh How Not to Write. Between the bad prose and the too-ridiculous-to-believe victim blaming, I can only sort of stare blankly and then give you mad props for survivng through this. It’s almost too bad to waste a well-written review on something this bad, but I’m glad you did.

  6. Karenmc says:

    Hey, fellow Murderino, thanks for reading all the way through this book. I’ll happily avoid it. (ssdgm)

  7. kitkat9000 says:

    Whoa, this sounds like a train wreck. Thank you so much for suffering through this so the rest of us don’t have to.

    Ugh, victim blaming. Just finished one with slut shaming, and though it was mild compared to others, I’ve found that my tolerance level even for that is zero. Nearly DNF’ed it but kept reading hoping it would improve. No such luck.

  8. Emmy says:

    I am officially burnt out on heroines being described as strong, either by the author or other characters in a book. If used by male characters, it usually comes off as condescending and seems like there’s an implied “for a woman” tacked on. I also can’t remember ever seeing it used in a book where the heroine didn’t turn around and acted like a total doormat/idiot within the next 10 pages. In this respect at least, the actions almost never seem to match up with the descriptions.

    Anyway, thank you for the review. I like romantic suspense, but not this kind. It’s good to know what to steer clear of. 🙂

  9. Rose says:

    Sadly, the mother was an alcoholic and desperate enough for male attention to allow him to smack her around.

    allow him to smack her around

    allow him

    That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

    Forget DNF, I probably would’ve called the cops on this book. Props to you for making it through and giving us a good summary of this batshittery.

  10. Allison says:

    Thanks for a great review! Also, I totally concur with your statement that Knit One, Girl Two is the perfect palate cleanser after a less-than-satisfying romance novel…

  11. LaraAmber says:

    I would have been warned off by the blurb. The town is called “Graveyard Falls”? Was “Mysterious Gloomy McGloomville taken? Is the town motto “We Always Have a Mysterious Opening on the Cheer Squad”?

  12. Louise says:

    The other review said that this town (which can’t be a very large one, if it’s got a sheriff rather than a chief of police) is on its third or fourth serial killer–within, apparently, everyone’s adult memory. Is that accurate? How many titles are planned for the series? Is it going to be like Murder She Wrote where the nice little town is so splendidly wholesome and healthful … that murder is the only cause of death?

  13. @Rose I KNOW. I honestly re-read that section because there’s no way I’d just read that. I’m amazed my head did not explode in the middle of this thing.

  14. @Louise This is the only one I’ve read in the series but that wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe the author is a cozy mystery fan since that’s like the gold standard for them. Small town, all of the murder.

  15. Anonymous says:

    I’m originally from a small town, and we only produced ONE serial killer!

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