The only thing I didn't like about 'Her Final Words' was the opening. It's the hook the rest of the book wriggles on: a teenage girl from rural Idaho drives for five hours, crossing a State line, to the FBI field office in Seattle, asks for agent Lucy Thorne by name, confesses to having murdered a twelve-year-old boy, explains that the boy's body has a bible verse carved into it and then refuses to say more. It's a great hook that was never going to need much to sell it, yet I felt like everything in the opening was too bright and too loud and trying too hard to tell 'look how dramatic this is!'

I almost stopped there. Except it really was a great hook and I wanted to wriggle on it a little so I persisted. I'm very glad I did. The tone changed as soon as Lucy Thorne arrives in Idaho, with a long weekend to check out the details of an apparently open and shut case that feels off because there is no motive. The image of the Sheriff standing in the rain waiting to meet Thorne and take her to where the body was found was dramatic without being pushed hard.

It quickly becomes clear that the teenager who confessed to the killing and the boy who was killed were both members of a local Church/Cult and I wondered for a while if we were up for Federal Government rescuing the poor country folk from an abusive cult sort of story, because that never ends well but, thankfully, Brianna Labuskes was more ambitious and more original than that.

This is a story where good guys and bad guys are hard to tell apart. Where everyone is connected to everyone else but how and what it means are not clear and where the only thing the FBI agent is certain about is that she doesn't understand what's really going on.

The false simplicity of 'the bad cult must be to blame' is quickly replaced with something denser and more textured. I liked the way Brianna Labuskes brought out the geographical isolation of this rural community while showing how aware everyone is of what everyone else is doing and who they're doing it with.

Telling the story through multiple points of view and cross-cutting timelines that flip from 'Now' to 'Three Days Earlier' really tightened the tension and kept the surprises coming. The more Agent Thorne learns about the people and their history with one another, the more complicated the puzzle becomes and the fewer people she can trust. Discovering the story from the point of view of the teenagers involved and the Sheriff as well as Agent Thorne made everything more personal and more human as well as deepening the mystery.

The plot, the characters and the tightly controlled pace kept me engaged all the way through. The denouement was unexpected, memorable, believable and deeply sad.

I'll be back for more of Brianna Labuskes' stories.

Book source ~ Kindle First

Clarke Sinclair is a Special Agent with the FBI and she and her partner Sam have been tracking a serial killer named Simon Cross for years. Every time they think they can save the girl and catch him they arrive too late. But this time a woman he’s kidnapped doesn’t fit his profile and he’s taken her before he’s finished with the one he already has. He’s changed his MO and Clarke doesn’t know why. All she does know is Cross is doing all of this because of her and she feels he’s building to a grand finale. Will they finally catch him before he kills again or will they themselves be his next victims?

This book is awful and I’m not entirely sure why I kept reading it. Maybe because the chapters not involving Clarke are actually pretty good. Every chapter from Clarke’s POV is shit. Seriously. How clichéd can a character be? And omg, the self-flagellating that makes zero difference is unbelievably tedious to slog through. Also, I’ve read about “rogue” FBI/police characters that actually do a whole lot better of straddling the line than her. No superior officer would EVER let her get away with the shit she’s been getting away with. Nope. Can’t suspend my disbelief THAT much. I actually started skimming much of her chapters to get back to Bess and Adelaide. Clarke is completely and totally unlikeable. And then the grand finale? WTF. Am I really supposed to buy that horseshit? I. Can’t. Even. How fucking stupid was that? I do NOT recommend this story. Ever.

The MC in this is completely unlikeable. She just rambles, trying to be deep and meaningful, but it's just confusing as fuck and comes across as fake as shit. There are other chapters with different POVs and those are interesting. Otherwise this would have been tossed to the DNF shelf. I may still do that. Or just skip her chapters altogether.

L'idea di base era molto carina peccato che la scelta di raccontare la vicenda sotto forma di novella breve abbia rovinato completamente l'atmosfera. Avrei voluto sapere di più sulla natura dei vendyr e sul mondo paranormale in cui vivono, sulle reazioni di altre creature paranormali e non, su vendyr passati e relazioni con umani ecc e invece vista la brevità ci si focalizza (male) sui due protagonisti con il classico schema Enemy to Lovers con i nostri due tonti che si conoscono, odiano con tutto il cuore e per creare angst e portare avanti la trama via di simpatico clichè del "Siamo anime gemelle ma non lo sappiamo e piagnucoliamo per metà libro perchè infelici e alla ricerca della nostra dolce metà mentre litighiamo con quella che non sappiamo essere la nostra anima gemella <3" 
Il problema è che come storia di fatto è simpatica e anche i protagonisti nonostante tutto non sono così male, soprattutto la buffa cugina che fa da Cupido riuscendo a farli mettere insieme e ragionare e.... avrei tanto voluto qualcosa in più, momenti più introspettivi, momenti più intimi (senza per forza cadere nel sesso) per fare avvicinare i due ragazzi e spingerli a capire il loro amore, qualche dettaglio in più sul mondo paranormale che li circonda o sulla loro famiglia ecc e invece nulla. Una lettura che consiglio di conseguenza esclusivamente a chi cerca qualcosa di leggero e senza troppe pretese, qualcosa di corto per staccare la spina.