Wendy the Super Librarian‘s review of Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain
Suspense/thriller fiction hardcover released by St. Martins Minotaur 2 Sep 08
As much as I love a good romance novel, I started out my reading life as a mystery reader. While both are genre fiction, I expect different things from each of them. In romance, I want the author to make me care about the characters. I want to become emotionally invested in their lives and struggles, which makes the happily-ever-after all that much sweeter. In mystery/suspense novels, I also want the author to make me care about the characters, but I also want what I call The White-Knuckle Factor. The kind of book that is so suspenseful, so full of thrills, that I literally cannot pry the book out of my hands. Chelsea Cain has made this her stock in trade, and this second book in her Gretchen Lowell series is a runaway freight train.
Sweetheart picks up where the first book in the series, Heartsick, left off. Archie Sheridan, a man once nearly tortured to death by diabolical female serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, is back on the job as a Portland, Oregon police detective and has moved back home with his family. This is a big step for Archie, living with his ex-wife and two children, because his time with Gretchen left him physically scarred, emotionally damaged, and with a pain killer addiction that would likely kill an elephant. Despite all this, Archie is still under Gretchen’s spell, haunted by her beauty and compelled by her sensuality.
There are three converging storylines in Sweetheart. Reporter, Susan Ward, who shadowed Archie throughout Heartsick, is still working on her blockbuster expose’ about a senator’s illicit affair with an underage girl. Decomposing bodies are showing up in a secluded wooded area, and Gretchen is still pulling strings, manipulating the story’s players, while locked up in prison. It all converges and boils over by the halfway point of the story, when Cain writes some fantastically tense scenes, and the characters find themselves in a race against time.
As much as I have come to love this series, it certainly isn’t for everybody. In fact, I see a lot of readers having major issues with this particular story. Cain writes deeply flawed characters. I cannot tell you how many times, over the course of reading this story, that I found myself thinking about Archie, “He did not just say/do/think that?!” These are highly damaged people, who make disastrous choices, and hurt people they love and care about. Also, it appears I’m going to have to resign myself to the fact that Susan is prone to Too-Stupid-To-Live Syndrome. She makes a boneheaded move in Heartsick, and has another episode in Sweetheart. She makes her choices, and a certain part of me understands them, while another part of me wants to shake her silly.
Should everybody read this book? No. It’s very dark, suspenseful, and the characters have more baggage than an international airport. However, what makes this book so compelling is Gretchen Lowell and her effect on the other characters in the story. She’s a woman, and also a killer, which means she is a master manipulator. Certainly she’s one sick, twisted individual, but watching her pull everybody’s strings, and calculate which buttons to push, makes for a truly remarkable character study. While Cain continues to tease readers about her past, Archie’s continued downward spiral, and the suspense thread about the lecherous senator, makes this a surefire bet for suspense fans.
If you haven’t read Chelsea Cain yet, you’re missing the most exciting new voice in suspense.
Grade: A
Summary:
When the body of a young woman is discovered in Portland’s Forest Park, Archie is reminded of the last time they found a body there, more than a decade ago: it turned out to be the Beauty Killer’s first victim, and Archie’s first case. This body can’t be one of Gretchen’s—she’s in prison—but after help from reporter Susan Ward uncovers the dead woman’s identity, it turns into another big case. Trouble is, Archie can’t focus on the new investigation because the Beauty Killer case has exploded: Gretchen Lowell has escaped from prison.
Archie hadn’t seen her in two months; he’d moved back in with his family and sworn off visiting her. Though it should feel like progress, he actually feels worse. The news of her escape spreads like wildfire, but secretly, he’s relieved. He knows he’s the only one who can catch her, and in fact, he has a plan to get out from under her thumb once and for all.
No excerpt found.
Other Books In The Series:
I loved this, too — except for one thing that is a spoiler, but that I felt should have been revealed in the first book. Since it wasn’t, I felt a little cheated (that’s an appropriate word, without spoiling too much) … as if Cain meant to show that Gretchen’s hold over Archie was so much more than we’d thought in the first book by adding this as an afterthought.
But to me, this revelation lessened how absolutely and wonderfully twisted the relationship was. I think because I really felt in the first book that Archie had lost something when he was tortured and saved by Gretchen, and became so obsessed with her … and it all surrounded that torture. That was just so effed up, I loved it.
So finding out that there was more than that torture just, I dunno, made the loss not so great. Even though, yeah, it was all still about Gretchen. But it put their mutual obsession in a realm that was more everyday, instead of just crazy … and so it lost something for me.
But still — Cain still has me by the proverbial balls (spleen?) in this series, and I’ll be begging someone for an ARC of the next one, I’m sure.
Ok…see…”The White-Knuckle Factor” is exactly why I don’t like suspense, romantic or otherwise. I’m a major wuss. I hate the racing pulse and the “OMG, what’s next???” feeling.
I’m apparently a part of the vast minority on this issue, but I can’t help it. I am a wimp, and suspense stresses me out. *shame*
Oddly enough, though, I can handle most horror and mystery plots, as long as they’re predictable and not suspenseful. Which kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? LOL
Meljean: I know of what you speak. Both of my sisters called me, foaming at the mouth, after they got to that part of the story. Me? It worked for me. And believe me, I know I’m going to be in the very, very small minority.
I don’t think this revelation would have worked in the first book, at least for me. Wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact. And in hindsight, I do think Cain did some foreshadowing in book one, but it was so damn subtle I didn’t pick up on a lot it until the second book.
Hence my disclaimer on why this book won’t be for everybody. I see a whole mess of people having a HUGE problem with where this story goes. But, it worked for me, largely because Cain is delivering The White Knuckle Factor.
Can I just say though – this was a damn hard review to write. I felt like everything I wanted to say constituted a spoiler.
I definitely liked where the story went. It was just that one thing, I’d have preferred to have been revealed in the first book, if it had to be included at all. For me, it didn’t add anything to the relationship now, but (because of the way the relationship had been set up in book #1) detracted from it — and if it had never been revealed at all, I still feel this book would have been just as good and fantastically twisted.
I can see why it was a hard review to write — so many things are so shocking, you don’t want to give them away before they happen. There really are so, so many WTF? OMG, no she/he didn’t! moments.
Okay so I saw HEARTSICK again in the bookstore yesterday. Did one of my picked up, put down, picked up, put down. How scared should I be????
Rosie:
Well….since I know the last Kay Hooper book freaked you out, I’m thinking Chelsea Cain might cause you to slip into some sort of shock-induced coma.