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A review by stefaniefrei
Into the Dark by Karen Rose
5.0
Page Turner
Trigger warning: abuse, sexual, verbal, physical, including children. Some good deal of PTSB, cutting persons into pieces while they are still alive – uhm, do I have to mention shooting, explosions, abduction, ….?? Still, there is much more gory stuff around, like Cody McFaddyen.
When five-year-old Joshua Rowland is asked what Michael does for him he says ‘Washes my clothes. Plays with me. Reads me stories at night and fixes my breakfast when I wake up. Eggs and bacon’. Lucky for him – but his older brother is only fourteen. Both their widowed-and-remarried mom does not care much, she is rather out partying or drugged. Their stepfather is a different story. Michael wakes up one night to find John Brewster sedating little Joshua, certainly for no good reason. He fights the grown-up and flees with the younger kid, only to witness by accident an even harsher crime. Talk? But to whom?
Diesel Kennedy had a rough childhood himself, with more similarities to Michael than both would love to even think about. The IT-pro volunteers as a soccer trainer to offer a male role model to kids just like Joshua. When the pre-schooler’s mom does not pick him up on time, again, Diesel gets to know Michael, only to learn that something is not quite right here. Thus, he turns to Dr. Dani Novak, for whom he not only has a not-so-secret crush for quite some time, but who can sign and thus can communicate with deaf Michael.
When John Brewster’s body parts are found in the Ohio river, Diesel, Dani, and the children find themselves in the middle of a police and FBI investigation, and later, as the target of a killer at large. They might have quite some help, but the whole story is not that easy to uncover.
This is my second Karen Rose and I love it, despite some minor issues. The book is #5 in the “Cincinnati series” and also #23 in the “Romantic Supsense series” – I have read none of either before, and the Romantic Supsense seems to be rather loosely interlinked with the Cincinnati part: imagine CSI, CSI Miami, etc. with the “staff” visiting each other time and again and the occasional name dropping, so it seems to me. Within the Cincinnatis, it seems that the focus is on one consistent group, but different members for each book – guessing from this and the blurbs. This comes with one of my issues – a huuuuuge crowd of people. A huge crowd of people, too, that does not seem to meet others a lot, as they are all interlinked. Like Dr. Dani Novak’s older brother is one of the FBI agents involved, both their cousin one of the cops involved, and younger brother Greg is deaf just like Michael. The older brother’s wife happens to be a child therapist etc.
At some point, the dogs got thrown in for the melee – I LOVE dogs, but this was about when I could only ever pin down the names to “good” or “other”, I just lost it. Did not seem to matter much, but it might have been easier with the four books (or 22) read ahead of this. Else, no problem at all (well, some spoilers to what happened before, like, “Dani survived the attack”?).
What I loved: The books brings to mind how to deal with somebody who is deaf, with somebody who is HIV-positive, and a couple of other things. This is all done so cleverly, I’d rather have this as a school read for older kids (who do not get nightmares from the violence, hopefully?). It basically is so much a read for respecting the other, try and put yourself in somebody’s shoes, use your brain and get informed about what is there – great. Mix in a hereditary desease, a gay couple who keeps it all together, and bringing to mind that some people’s childhoods are not what they should be. All this without lecturing or making those topics the only focus, more a really relaxed approach of “hey, that’s society, live with it or be like Uncle Jim”.
Oh, did I mention the story is page-turning breath-taking?
What was not so much my cup of tea: The Diesel physiology. Come on, that guy has a full-time job with a newspaper, volunteers with the kids and builds houses for those that could not do that on their own. Yet he is huge, does not have one ounce of fat upon him – meaning, a fitness that comes from working out some hours DAILY. Not that you ever saw him pushing iron, or eat stupid amounts of protein. Oh, please! On the other hand, I hate tattoos to quite some extent (I am okay with maybe one the size of a square inch somewhere hidden) – but Karen Rose’s description was somewhat mouth watering still
Trigger warning: abuse, sexual, verbal, physical, including children. Some good deal of PTSB, cutting persons into pieces while they are still alive – uhm, do I have to mention shooting, explosions, abduction, ….?? Still, there is much more gory stuff around, like Cody McFaddyen.
When five-year-old Joshua Rowland is asked what Michael does for him he says ‘Washes my clothes. Plays with me. Reads me stories at night and fixes my breakfast when I wake up. Eggs and bacon’. Lucky for him – but his older brother is only fourteen. Both their widowed-and-remarried mom does not care much, she is rather out partying or drugged. Their stepfather is a different story. Michael wakes up one night to find John Brewster sedating little Joshua, certainly for no good reason. He fights the grown-up and flees with the younger kid, only to witness by accident an even harsher crime. Talk? But to whom?
Diesel Kennedy had a rough childhood himself, with more similarities to Michael than both would love to even think about. The IT-pro volunteers as a soccer trainer to offer a male role model to kids just like Joshua. When the pre-schooler’s mom does not pick him up on time, again, Diesel gets to know Michael, only to learn that something is not quite right here. Thus, he turns to Dr. Dani Novak, for whom he not only has a not-so-secret crush for quite some time, but who can sign and thus can communicate with deaf Michael.
When John Brewster’s body parts are found in the Ohio river, Diesel, Dani, and the children find themselves in the middle of a police and FBI investigation, and later, as the target of a killer at large. They might have quite some help, but the whole story is not that easy to uncover.
This is my second Karen Rose and I love it, despite some minor issues. The book is #5 in the “Cincinnati series” and also #23 in the “Romantic Supsense series” – I have read none of either before, and the Romantic Supsense seems to be rather loosely interlinked with the Cincinnati part: imagine CSI, CSI Miami, etc. with the “staff” visiting each other time and again and the occasional name dropping, so it seems to me. Within the Cincinnatis, it seems that the focus is on one consistent group, but different members for each book – guessing from this and the blurbs. This comes with one of my issues – a huuuuuge crowd of people. A huge crowd of people, too, that does not seem to meet others a lot, as they are all interlinked. Like Dr. Dani Novak’s older brother is one of the FBI agents involved, both their cousin one of the cops involved, and younger brother Greg is deaf just like Michael. The older brother’s wife happens to be a child therapist etc.
At some point, the dogs got thrown in for the melee – I LOVE dogs, but this was about when I could only ever pin down the names to “good” or “other”, I just lost it. Did not seem to matter much, but it might have been easier with the four books (or 22) read ahead of this. Else, no problem at all (well, some spoilers to what happened before, like, “Dani survived the attack”?).
What I loved: The books brings to mind how to deal with somebody who is deaf, with somebody who is HIV-positive, and a couple of other things. This is all done so cleverly, I’d rather have this as a school read for older kids (who do not get nightmares from the violence, hopefully?). It basically is so much a read for respecting the other, try and put yourself in somebody’s shoes, use your brain and get informed about what is there – great. Mix in a hereditary desease, a gay couple who keeps it all together, and bringing to mind that some people’s childhoods are not what they should be. All this without lecturing or making those topics the only focus, more a really relaxed approach of “hey, that’s society, live with it or be like Uncle Jim”.
Oh, did I mention the story is page-turning breath-taking?
What was not so much my cup of tea: The Diesel physiology. Come on, that guy has a full-time job with a newspaper, volunteers with the kids and builds houses for those that could not do that on their own. Yet he is huge, does not have one ounce of fat upon him – meaning, a fitness that comes from working out some hours DAILY. Not that you ever saw him pushing iron, or eat stupid amounts of protein. Oh, please! On the other hand, I hate tattoos to quite some extent (I am okay with maybe one the size of a square inch somewhere hidden) – but Karen Rose’s description was somewhat mouth watering still