Review: Her Dark Secret (Ivy Bishop Mystery Thriller Book 1) by Alex Sigmore

                                                          

Print Length: 258 pages

Publisher: Erin Warren Author, LLC (March 25, 2024)

From Goodreads.com: A headless body washes up on the shores of western Oregon...

And newly-minted Detective Ivy Bishop has been assigned the case. Having been abandoned by her family when she was twelve and navigating much of her young life on her own before joining the force, Ivy has a lot to prove.

Discovering what really happened to her family has plagued Ivy for years. And the trauma of the night she can’t remember has left her unable to touch another person without experiencing violent panic attacks.

Begrudgingly accepting a new partner, Ivy is pushed to the limit of what she thinks she can handle in order to track this killer down.

Except, when more bodies start showing up, both detectives realize the problem is bigger than they thought.

And when Ivy learns the truth behind the killer’s motives, it will not only tear open old wounds she long thought had been sealed, but connect back to that night fifteen years ago when her world fell apart.

The one night that changed everything.

Tick, tock, Ivy. Time is running out.

                                                         *******************

My Rating: 1 star out of 5

I'm not going to lie, I struggled A LOT with this one. To begin with I found Ivy's whole condition to be utterly ridiculous. I understand that the fear of being touched is a real thing, but when it debilitates a person to the severe extent that it does Ivy, there is no possible way she would have made it through the police academy (where they participate in hand to hand combat), but how did she ever make it through being a beat cop to become a detective in the first place? She even thinks to herself (after reassuring her partner that she would be able to do it no problem) that she would have to wear gloves in the event she had to handcuff a suspect so that her bare skin didn't touch theirs. I was also a bit annoyed at the fact that we had this piece of information repeated to us time and again in Ivy's own thoughts (seriously she spends the first few chapters trying to talk herself out of having a panic attack simply from sitting in the same car as her partner). 

I also found it both highly improbable and completely unbelievable that between the three detectives on the case (the one who originally had the case and then Ivy and her partner) and all of the hours they spent on trying to identify their victims, as soon as Ivy makes a visit to a former friend of hers with some dubious (read probably illegal) computer equipment, said friend is able to name their last two victims within 15 minutes. This was especially annoying because one of their victims had a knee replacement and his records were right there, but the original investigating officer didn't bother following it up, and it took these two over half of the book to realize that pesky little detail in the autopsy report (even though they had supposedly been pouring over them for days prior to this). 

Although, I suppose I should be thankful she had such a friend on tap because this book was beyond tedious in the grunt work these two had to go through, and then for their superior officer to basically tell them to find someone to pin the murders on? Pardon me? The ending was.... well kind of anti-climatic (at least for me). I knew once the scene started to unfold how it would play out, but the reasoning for the killings was just weird to me. 

The sad thing is, Ivy does have an interesting background (her parents and brother went missing one night and she has no memory of what happened), I'm not sure that I will continue on with this series.