The Vanishing Season

Officer Ellery Hathaway knows another death is coming to her town of Woodbury, Mass. But no one will believe her, definitely not the chief of police. Why is Ellery so certain? Because for the past three years, a local resident has disappeared around her birthday, after Ellery receives a birthday card from an anonymous sender. But no one is supposed to know who she really is.

Fourteen years ago, Ellery was 14-year-old Abigail, the sole survivor of a serial killer of young women. Abigail had been kidnapped on her birthday. After her ordeal, she switched to using her middle name, and the only person who knows her true identity is her rescuer, FBI agent Reed Markham. Since another birthday--i.e., the Vanishing Season--is fast approaching, Ellery now calls him for help in stopping a possible copycat killer and the past from destroying her sanity.

In her debut, Joanna Schaffhausen has created an arresting protagonist who's as strong as she is vulnerable. Though Ellery now knows how to protect herself, she's afflicted by PTSD and survivor's guilt: "Ellie wasn't suicidal; she'd fought hard for her life and won. But sometimes, especially during the longest nights, she did wonder if maybe the other girls had been luckier after all." Markham is haunted by the victims he didn't save. The killer isn't as well fleshed out; his motives remain unclear. The reward lies more in seeing how two damaged people work together to beat back demons only they can see and end up saving each other. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

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