After a brutal murder, a child is at risk as a leak is within the department trying to protect her. Taylor, the child’s therapist, is the only one she’s started to open up to. But this leaves a target on her back too. Taylor came from California to find her real father, a man her mother had lied about for years. Will she get the happy ending she deserves?
Monster in the Closet is part of Rose’s Baltimore series, but it works well as a standalone. I’m not even sure which characters are in Rose’s previous books. But we get a introduction to every character who meet either way. We’re also told how each of these characters are linked, sometimes aggressively so. I found some parts quite repetitive. We were told multiple times how two people know each other, and often we would be reminded of something that happened two chapters previously. This was quite irritating and it actually pulled me out of the book.
So many characters, I often forgot who was related to who. Even Taylor in the book had to write out a family tree during her research before moving to the stables. I felt maybe there were too many characters involved. Especially when some show up right at the end of the book. The main characters were written in depth, but some characters did seem to merge into one another in my head. The two cops for example, I just kept forgetting which one was which and which one had done X, Y and Z. I didn’t really feel attached to anyone in Clay and Taylor’s story line.
I enjoyed the murder case story line a lot more. Jazzie was such a brave and clever child and I really routed for her. Gage was a scary villain, and you really felt there was a threat from him. I loved how we got a lot of backstory and details through both Gage and Jazzie’s POV’s.
Too much romance for me, and a lot of unneeded sex scenes. From the synopsis I just thought this book was a thriller, but apparently it’s a romantic suspense. It definitely wasn’t what I expected, and I just didn’t enjoy the romantic sub plots at all (as usual). Although this book was good, I probably won’t be picking up any more of Rose’s books.
I received Monster in the Closet* by Karen Rose from the publisher via BookBridgr. This is an unbiased and honest review.