Review: The Girl in Room 16 (Darcy Hunt FBI Mystery Suspense Thriller #1) by Eva Sparks

                                                   

Print Length: 416 pages

Publisher: Eva Sparks (January 28, 2022)

From Goodreads.com:  Hunted by her past… haunted by her future.

Eighteen years ago, FBI Agent Darcy Hunt’s life changed forever when her little sister was abducted right under her nose—murdered by a crazed guild of misguided zealots.

Now, as she spends her days and nights hunting down the very worst of humanity, Darcy receives an unexpected call directing her to the sleepy small town of Miller’s Grove. Local law enforcement is unable to make sense of a chilling case, one that will prove to be the most complex and baffling of her career.

Small towns harbor big secrets, and as Darcy peels back the layers of Miller Grove’s past, some of the residents start to get nervous. Never one to back down, Darcy must call on every bit of her training and experience as the investigation takes a sharp turn and forces her to confront a harrowing past she thought had finally let her go.

Meanwhile, someone lurks deep in the shadows, watching her, drawing her in closer and closer to the edge of truth that has lain hidden for all these years.

A puzzle slowly emerges, one that has taken years for a sick and twisted mind to carefully conceive, and it is only when a third girl goes missing that Darcy begins to realize that the grim events from her own past might be the only key to stopping an emboldened and fearless monster.

  

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

On one hand, this book did manage to hold my attention throughout so there is something to be said about this author's writing style, but truth be told I'm not even sure if that is a selling point to this novel or not. Because I had A LOT of issues with this one, mainly the glaring plot holes.

On the surface Darcy seems like just the kind of character I would enjoy. She overcame a tragic past to become an FBI agent, using the loss of her sister to push herself to the limits, solving cases that are unsolvable to other agents. Now when she was called back to the town in which her life had been irrevocably changed, I was intrigued. Would she be able to push the memory of what had happened to her and her sister away, or would she let it consume her to the point she lost sight of everything else? I didn't see it as a conflict of interest then because she was the closest FBI agent to that area when the call for assistance from the local police went out, and these killings in no way were similar to what had happened in her past. But as the investigation goes on, it becomes clear that maybe there are some similarities. And now, Darcy is forced to go back through all of the horrors of what happened to her in order to try and catch this killer? 

Uh... this would constitute a huge conflict of interest which Darcy should have known and immediately turned the investigation over to someone else. Especially when they figure out that somehow their suspect was able to engineer it so that Darcy herself would be the agent sent to investigate (which still doesn't make sense to me as her supervisor could have just as well seen the location and sent someone else especially since Darcy was on vacation when he called in the first place). 

But she didn't. And even when she knew she was missing something, or getting too caught up in her past, she wouldn't even ask for help because she kept telling herself that she couldn't afford wasting time to bring anyone else up to speed. But she could afford wasting time on other things? Like taking walks through the woods, or flirting with men even I could tell were not what they seemed? 

With that being said, it really wasn't surprising when Darcy herself became the first glaring plot holes. Yes plot holes, as in plural. You see when someone charming and handsome just happens to show up out of the blue at the place she is staying at (during the middle of a murder investigation let me remind you), and she doesn't question what he tells her, even when the reader could tell from limited information they had that something just wasn't right. She waits entirely too long (in my opinion) to ask about the place she and her sister had been held captive in, even when they had another missing girl on their hands. In fact, she didn't even think to search the place in question when they were searching for where the missing girl might have been taken. It wasn't until much later it dawns on her to say the place should be watched, only to be told the state razed it years ago. Which... since she admitted to having studied the case files (even though she denied it at first, but I blame this entirely on the author forgetting what they had originally said), she should have known? Later on, she all but comes face to face with their suspect for the second time (the first was a plot hole all its own that I will get to in a minute), but when she realizes who it is all of her FBI training flees her and she just freezes, giving him time to get away. Again. 

In fact the ease in which this man seems to disappear had me wondering if he was in fact not a man, but a ghost instead considering the way he seemed to be there one minute and gone the next. Case in point, he somehow manages to enter through the locked front door of the Chalet Darcy is staying at during a storm, leave a trail of water to her bedroom, but then vanish? And I do mean vanish as once his footsteps stopped at her bedside, there was nothing else. No footsteps leading back out, and the front door was once again locked (including the deadbolt) just as she had left it. 

I think one of the biggest issues for me with this novel comes near the end when they finally know who their killer is, and are racing to save another girl from dying. It is during this scene when two of the most implausible things I have ever read in my life come into play. 

****SPOILER ALERT (use your mouse to highlight the hidden words)****

To begin with, as Chief Bancroft and Darcy are trying to navigate a treacherous ridge in order to surprise their suspect, the Chief grabs hold of a rotten root and ends up slipping and falling, landing on his back twenty-feet below where he had been. Darcy has no choice, but to leave him there and continue on although she notes when she does that while his eyes are closed, he is still breathing. 

A confrontation happens between Darcy and their suspect who, seeing a way to save himself violently thrusts his victim towards the cliff edge so hard that her feet lift off the ground as she careens head first towards certain death. In this moment, Darcy showcases some superhuman powers of her own when she is able to (in microseconds we are told), turn and fire a lethal shot into the back of the suspects head as he runs away before throwing herself to the ground in a bid to save the victim. 

And just when it looks like they are both going to plummet to certain death, they are rescued, not by any of the backup officers that should have already arrived on scene, but by Chief Bancroft himself. Who miraculously survived a twenty foot fall with nothing more than a hairline fracture to his leg that he was somehow still able to use (the author says its due to adrenaline, but be that as it may, there is no way someone falls twenty feet and only gets a hairline fracture).  

****END SPOILER ALERT****

I would have been happy had we at least had a satisfying ending after all of that, but when this story ended there was still a major plot-point that had not been resolved at all. Which made me mostly irritated, but a little intrigued as well. I will probably give this series one more chance before I decide if it's worth it to continue on or not. 

If you'd like to read this novel and see what you think for yourself, then you can