Review: You Did This (Claire Wolfe, #1) by Jamie Millen

  

Print Length: 414 pages

Publisher: Kindle Direct Publishing (January 6, 2022)

From Goodreads.com: Everybody loves Claire’s little sister, Tina. But only Claire sees the twisted psychopath hiding behind her sister’s angelic face. When Tina is brutally murdered on her fourteenth birthday, the day Claire failed to walk her home from school, Claire never forgives herself. And neither does their mother.

Twelve years later, more girls turn up dead in Newburgh exactly like Tina. Claire, now a police detective, suspects that her sister’s murderer is still on the prowl. But the serial killer stumps the FBI forensic profiler assisting the case and Special Agent Robert Cline—Claire’s old flame.

When Claire becomes the lead suspect in the murder investigation, the system turns against her. Unable to trust anyone—not even herself—Claire must break every rule in the book to save the next girl.

With time running out in this nerve-shredding psychological thriller and harrowing family drama, a shocking discovery changes everything. Is Claire’s sister truly dead—or is she playing one final lethal prank?

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My Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Man, I have so many mixed feelings about this story. On one hand, there were parts of it that drew me in and kept me reading (the first chapter man, really set the tone for how I thought this novel was going to go). However, on the flip side there were also parts that had me rolling my eyes and wondering if this author had any idea how things actually work (which is funny considering there is a passage in the story about how people watch a forensics program on the television and they think it makes them a master criminal).

When it looked like Claire might actually be the killer, I was intrigued. But then I realized that that scenario had to be a red herring if what I was reading was book one in a series. When she dug up her sisters grave alone, I had to roll my eyes. Without taking into account how long that would be to do, caskets are buried in a concrete casing, so she wouldn't have just been able to open the casket to look inside of it. Then we have the scene where she takes her (dark) hair and dyes it blonde. I'm sorry, any woman with dark hair knows that you can't dye it blonde, nor can you bleach it blonde in one go out of a box. And when asked if she's going to keep it that way she says yes because "it will take too long to wash out". What?! 

Another thing that really hindered this book (in my opinion) was not only just how long it was, but also the unnecessary twist at the end. Honestly, I think the author should have saved that particular bombshell for a book later on in the series as dropping it at the end of this one was just too much and really took away from everything that had happened prior to that. 

However, despite these things I think I will give at least the second book a chance just to see if the story-telling improves.