Spring Girls

Northampton County, Book 3

By: Karen Katchur

Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo

Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

She’s the only one who survived...and the only one who can help find the killer.

Another spring, another dead girl pulled from a lake in the Appalachian foothills: the latest victim in a series of murders with few leads. But Detective Geena Brassard and her partner, Parker Reed, finally land a break when they receive a tip about a previously unknown survivor of the so-called Spring Strangler.

The survivor’s reluctant to help with the case for reasons that aren’t all clear. Even so, Geena uncovers a connective thread between the victims, and recently discovered DNA brings her closer to the killer’s identity. But Geena knows the survivor has the most to offer the investigation - if also the most to lose.

Geena is torn between securing the surviving victim’s help and protecting her from further danger. One thing is certain: Geena and Parker must find answers before the killer claims another life - or returns to finish off the one who got away.

©2020 Karen Katchur. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Distinctive characters enhance the fast-moving, twist-filled plot, and the killer’s identity comes as a nice surprise.... Katchur is on a roll.” (Publishers Weekly)

“The dilemmas of two good women struggling in very different ways to do the right thing creates suffocating suspense.” (Kirkus Reviews)

A good read

A great suspenseful thriller! 3rd in the series, possibly the best so far! Each can be read as a stand-alone. Well written and well narrated. I recommend this book.

Eh. Read the first two books at least

This third book from the series was my least favorite of them, but it was not bad at all and had an amazing twist in it that surprised me. The focus is on a new character who had been attacked a few years prior as a possible survivor to someone who has been murdering young women. I can't really type much about it because I don't want to give away much of the story. The main characters have shifted from the first two books, though there is one common character who is minor in this one.

I usually prefer Audible to Kindle, but not this time

This is the third book of a detective series set in northeastern Pennsylvania. I read it as a stand-alone, but I might have liked it better had I read the first two books. I’m sure the author worked on developing her characters in the earlier books. Author keeps repeating the fact that a detective has eidetic memory. Show me, please.

I’m a crime fiction fan, so as I began reading, I guessed that the author would concentrate on the domestic and psychological storyline. Plus, I laid odds that the killer would be outta-left-field and/or would be revealed via the psych storyline. One culprit is guessable early in the book, and as I kept reading, the culprit begins to do all but shout, “Look at me!” With that figured out, what should be “twists” are more predictable, as is much of the denouement.

I usually prefer listening to Audible versions to Kindle, but this time, the narrator’s voice annoyed, no matter the speed. Oddly, I didn’t have problems with Lauren Ezzo’s narrating previously, but this time her cadence seemed off, somehow.

Great plot, poor female characters

This would be a significantly better story if the female detective didn’t have so many hang ups from childhood (her dad turning his head and missing her on the slide - seriously?) and adulthood (whiny, poor-me monologs about her previous partner “abandoning” her). The plot was quite interesting but the female characters personalities ruined it.