A Book A Week

Earlier this year, I read Sunday Silence by Nicci French as part of a TLC Book Tour. Although I was jumping into the series with the penultimate book, I thoroughly enjoyed the read and was looking forward to seeing how the series ended. The promise of a showdown between heroine Frieda Klein and notorious serial killer Dean Reeve was almost too much to pass up. When I was offered to review the final novel and kick of TLC's latest tour, I jumped at the opportunity.

Lola is in a panic. Her dissertation is due soon, and she hasn't even begun to come up with a topic for it. She isn't the most academically motivated student, but she never imagined she would be at this point. Desperately, she seeks the guidance of her professor. The professor has seen this type of unengaged student before. He offers the half-hearted suggestion that Lola find someone to shadow who works in her field of interest. He suggests the budding criminologist find infamous psychologist Frieda Klein. There's only one problem. No one knows where Frieda Klein is.

This moment has been a long time coming. What started as a perfectly normal consulting relationship between a psychologist and the police has turned into something horrible. Dr. Frieda Klein has watched as her world has been turned upside down. Her life has become intertwined with the obsessive delusions of murderer Dean Reeve. He's latched onto her for some reason, leaving a path of bodies and heartache in his wake. Now Frieda has cut herself off from the rest of the world. She's moved from her home, changed her appearance, and broken communication with her friends and family. Now she waits. Dean Reeve is out there, and she's the only one who can stop him.

In The Day of the Dead, the authorial duo Nicci French bring their long-running series to a satisfying conclusion. Eight novels in, they have built an extremely engaging cast of characters and an ever-intriguing cat and mouse scenario between Klein and Reeve. As the final novel in the series, The Day of the Dead works just fine as a standalone read, but I definitely think the ending will be more satisfying for those who have experienced the other books. More than the previous book, this novel sees the author delve deeper into Klein's mental state, an experience that is made even more poignant by the fact that Klein is a psychologist. The Day of the Dead has everything readers will want from a final novel and ends with a near perfect scenario that succeeds on multiple levels.

For more information, visit the author's website, publisher's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
This review kicks off a tour from TLC Book Tours. Check out the full tour schedule here.

(2018, 29)