Deep Dark

author: Laura Griffin

Deep Dark by Laura Griffin is the tenth book in her Tracers series, but can easily be read a stand-alone. It’s a romantic suspense thriller that features a white hat hacker heroine and a cop hero who is fifteen years older than her.

Laney Knox works to keep predators offline, and she has reason to suspect that a recent murder is related to a project she worked on for an online dating site. Laney thinks that the murder is stalking women through the site, and she works (begrudgingly) with Detective Reed Novak to prove her theory. What Laney doesn’t tell Reed is that she might have had a past encounter with the killer.

I loved a lot of things about this book. I loved that the heroine was a hacker, and that she took it upon herself to educate the hero on the ways in which women are endangered and attacked online. I loved that there was a little bit of a May/December romance, and that Laney pushes Reed out of his buttoned-up comfort zone.

This thriller is not for all readers. It’s hedges on the scary side and trigger warnings for discussions of rape and violence. It’s not exploitative, though, and the heroine’s knowledge of internet safety, particularly as it relates to women, drives the narrative. As a character, Reed felt much less developed than Laney, and while we do get some backstory on him, I would have liked to see him more fleshed out.

Fans of cyber-thrillers or readers looking for a hacker heroine should definitely check Deep Dark out. Those who prefer their romantic suspense without explicit violence may want to steer clear.

– Elyse

Romance, Romantic Suspense

Terminal Alliance

author: Jim C. Hines

Terminal Alliance involves the janitorial crew of the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish. “Mops” Adamopoulos and her sanitation team are some of the humans serving on a Krakau ship. When all of the other humans on the ship turn feral (like zombies) and attack the crew, the Shipboard Sanitation and Hygiene Team has to survive the attack, save the ship, solve an ancient and interplanetary mystery, and avoid being killed.

With a couple of exceptions, I didn’t get invested in the characters in this book. However, I loved all the clever setups and the humor and the shout outs. When an AI has to lure Ferals into a part of the ship, he reads not just Austen, but Lady Susan, the utterly wicked book that was recently made into Love and Friendship. Translators work imperfectly and with the most profane possible results. The maintenance crew makes excellent and often hilarious use of their knowledge of cleaning agents and the excretory habits of other species.

There’s no romance here, alas, just a goofy romp through space. This is hard science fiction (meaning that there’s a lot of explanation of and emphasis on technology) with both intellectual humor and, literally, potty humor (but not too much). I would have liked more character development but overall the book is a hoot.

– Carrie S

Science Fiction/Fantasy

The Vanishing

author: Sophia Tobin

The Vanishing by Sophia Tobin is a Gothic mystery that’s so twisty, turny, and weird, at times I would look at my glass and wonder if I just drank the laudanum.

Like any good Gothic, The Vanishing takes place in a creepy house on the desolate moors, this particular estate being called White Windows. Annaleigh Calvert is sent there to act as housekeeper to the mysterious Marcus Twentyman and his sister Hester, but almost immediately senses that things are off-kilter. Soon Annaleigh feels herself pulled into an elaborate trap set by her employers, and begins to question the wisdom of staying at White Windows, but she’s also falling in love with a local, Thomas Digby, which compels her to remain.

Trigger warning for everything, basically: sexual assault, child endangerment, physical abuse, drug abuse… This book a dark Gothic, and pretty crazysauce to boot. I really, really enjoyed the first portion of the book, as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on at White Windows. The narrative is completely immersive, which means as Annaleigh’s situation gets more bizarre and disturbing, I as the reader experienced her feelings of paranoia and fear acutely. That’s fun to begin with, but not a great thing when the book starts to veer from hints of the insidious to actual insidious and malicious acts playing out on stage in technicolor.

I would have given the first half of The Vanishing an A for it’s delicious Gothic creepiness, but I felt the second half of the book was tragic and icky enough to make me despair for Annaleigh. Add to that an unsatisfactory ending, and I was left feeling lukewarm at best.

– Elyse

Gothic