Review: You Made Me (Claire Wolfe, #2) by Jamie Millen

   

Print Length: 472 pages

Publisher: Kindle Direct Publishing (February 7, 2022)

From Goodreads.com: Death is one heartbeat away when your stalker is a serial killer.

Police detective Claire Wolfe has a secret admirer. But instead of sending flowers, this twisted psychopath murders wealthy, young women...and leaves gruesome messages for Claire on their mutilated corpses.

To decode her stalker's obsession, Claire teams up with her lover, Special Agent Robert Cline, FBI forensic profiler Dr. Sally Fleischer, and a pretty new detective with secrets of her own.

But there's more to this stalker than meets the eye. The murderer has powerful friends, and they all want a piece of Claire. With a serial killer watching her every move in this lethal game of cat and mouse, Claire must tear open old wounds and expose deadly family secrets. And her poisonous mother isn't making her life any easier.

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

On the whole, I enjoyed this story more than I enjoyed the first one, however I will say that once again this author is a little too long-winded for my personal tastes. I also stand by what I initially said about the author and the fact that they should have left the big reveal of Claire's father for a later book, and this one would have been perfect for that. 

However, as much as I would have enjoyed that, that isn't what happened. So let's talk about what did happen. Right off the bat, I wasn't surprised to see that Claire and her mother were still at odds with one another. After all Denise had held a grudge for much too long for them to start this story having already made amends with one another. I felt that the back and forth between the two (along with Denise battling alcoholism), while a bit over the top, was on par with how they were in the first book so I enjoyed seeing the two characters evolve over the course of this story. 

What I did not enjoy about this character evolution was Claire still being uncertain as to whether or not she was the one losing her grip on reality or having psychotic breaks. I had seen enough of that behavior from her in the first book, and after being cleared of suspicion as well as learning the truth, I had sincerely hoped that would have been the end of her questioning her sanity. 

There was also something weird that I had found in the editing. As the story progresses, Claire is visited in her home by the killer. At first she cannot figure out how it had happened as all of her doors and windows were still locked. Even a walk-through of her house with a police detective doesn't turn up any clues. However, the moment her boyfriend FBI Agent Rob Cline and her do a second walk through, she spots something she hadn't before.... a hidden wall. It is then stated that the killer "left the secret doorway open for her to find." Only she didn't exactly find it did she?

I will say that the red herrings in this novel kept me guessing more often than the last novel which was something I enjoyed, and the ending left me intrigued. Where are things heading now that Claire is about to step into a new role working with the FBI? I do already have the third novel on my kindle and look forward to jumping into that one tonight.