Book ~ "Freak" (2012) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ Sitting alone in a maximum-security prison cell, Abby Maddox is a celebrity. Her claim to fame is the envy of every freak on the outside: she’s the former lover of Ethan Wolfe, the killer who left more than a dozen dead women in his wake and nearly added Puget Sound State professor Sheila Tao to the tally. Now Abby, serving a nine-year sentence for slashing a police officer’s throat in a moment of rage, has little human contact - save for the letters that pour in from demented fans, lunatics, and creeps. But a new wave of murders has given Abby a possible chance for a plea bargain - because this killer has been sending her love letters, and carving a message on the bodies of the victims: Free Abby Maddox.

Jerry Isaac will never forget the attack - or his attacker. The hideous scarring and tortured speech are daily reminders that the one-time Seattle PD officer, now a private investigator, is just lucky to be alive. Abby Maddox deserves to rot in jail - forever, as far as Jerry’s concerned. But she alone may possess crucial evidence - letters from this newest killer - that could crack open the disturbing case. With the help of Professor Sheila Tao, seasoned police detective Mike Torrance, and intuitive criminology student Danny Mercy, Jerry must coax the shattering truth from isolated, dangerous Abby Maddox. Can he put the pieces together before Abby’s number one fan takes another life in the name of a killer’s perverted idea of justice?

Ethan had been a teaching assistant to Sheila, a professor, and they had an affair. When she broke up with him, he didn't take it well and he kidnapped her. They were eventually found and Ethan was killed. Ethan had apparently killed many women and it is suspected that Abby, his girlfriend, was also involved, though she denies it. She is serving a nine year sentence in prison for slashing the throat of Jerry, a private detective, so she could escape when it was discovered what Ethan had done.

A year later, women who look like Abby are murdered and "Free Abby Maddox" is carved into their backs. Abby agrees to help catch the murderer if she is moved into a minimum security prison. As much as Jerry despises Abby for what she did to him, he agrees to help Mike, his ex-partner police officer, in doing what he has to do to save women's lives.

I've liked other books by this author and thought this one was ridiculous. It is written in third person perspective with a focus on where the action was. It was unbelievable how Abby was able to manipulate everyone just so she could get revenge on Sheila. It was gross how Jerry kept scratching at is scar. Though it is second in the Creep series, it works as a stand alone but I would suggest you read the first one first so you get the full background. As a head's up, there is swearing and extreme violence.

Book ~ "Creep" (2011) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ If he can’t have her ...

Dr. Sheila Tao is a professor of psychology. An expert in human behavior. And when she began an affair with sexy, charming graduate student Ethan Wolfe, she knew she was playing with fire. Consumed by lust when they were together, riddled with guilt when they weren’t, she knows the three-month fling with her teaching assistant has to end. After all, she’s finally engaged to a kind and loving investment banker who adores her and she’s taking control of her life. But when she attempts to end the affair, Ethan Wolfe won’t let her walk away.

... no one else can.

Ethan has plans for Sheila, plans that involve posting a sex video that would surely get her fired and destroy her prestigious career. Plans to make her pay for rejecting him. And as she attempts to counter his every threatening move without her colleagues or her fiancé discovering her most intimate secrets, a shattering crime rocks Puget Sound State University: a female student, a star athlete, is found stabbed to death. Someone is raising the stakes of violence, sex, and blackmail ... and before she knows it, Sheila is caught in a terrifying cat-and-mouse game with the lover she couldn’t resist - who is now the monster who won’t let her go.

Sheila is a professor, who while dating a banker named Morris, has an affair with Ethan, her much younger teaching assistant. When Morris proposes, Sheila breaks it off with Ethan but Ethan isn't going to make it easy for her. He threatens to publish a video of them and tell everyone about their affair. Eventually Sheila realizes she has to be honest with Morris about it and hopes he'll understand and still want to marry her. When Ethan discovers she's done this, he decides that if he can't have her no one can and arranges for Sheila to disappear. Morris can't believe she would leave like that and suspects something has happened to her and doesn't give up looking for her.

I've liked other books by this author and thought this one was okay. It is written in third person perspective with a focus on where the action was. I thought some of the actions were extreme and unbelievable but went with it ... like how Ethan got away with what he did and that Morris could perhaps forgive Sheila after all that had happened. There were a lot of addictions, which was excessive ... I thought picking one would have been enough for the story. As a head's up, there is swearing and violence.

Book ~ "Jar of Hearts" (2018) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ This is the story of three best friends: one who was murdered, one who went to prison, and one who's been searching for the truth all these years.

When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong - one of the most popular girls in school - disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.

But fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser - now a detective with Seattle PD - finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.

To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.

While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.

How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it?

In high school, Geo, Angela and Kaiser were best friends. When Geo met Calvin, who was a couple years older than them, they started dating and she became obsessed with him, even though he was physically and emotionally abusive to her. One night after a party, Angela is killed and rather than tell anyone, Geo has kept it a secret all these years. Everyone thinks Angela ran away.

Fourteen years later, Geo is a VP with a pharmaceutical company and engaged. Angela's body is found chopped up and buried in the woods near the house Geo grew up in. Evidence shows that Calvin killed Angela and Geo had helped. Kaiser, who is now a police officer, arrests her. She testifies against Calvin and is sent to prison for five years, needless to say losing her job and her beau.

When Geo gets out of prison, she tries to pick up her life again but people don't forget. Plus there is serial killer on the loose killing and chopping up women and murdering young children and Calvin, who had escaped from prison, is the suspect because it's so similar to Angela's murder. Kaiser suspects Calvin is trying to give Geo a message and investigates.

I've liked other books by this author but didn't like this one ... it was sooooooo negative. It is written in third person perspective with a focus on where the action was. The timeline shifts back and forth from the past (to give you the backstory to present day). The "whodunnit" at the end was ridiculous and unbelievable. None of the characters were likeable. As a head's up, there is swearing and violence (multiple rapes).

Book ~ "Wonderland" (2015) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ Welcome to Wonderland. By day, it’s a magical place boasting a certain retro charm. Excited children, hands sticky with cotton candy, run frenetically from the Giant Octopus ride to the Spinning Sombrero, while the tinkling carnival music of the giant Wonder Wheel - the oldest Ferris wheel in the Pacific Northwest - fills the air. But before daybreak, an eerie feeling descends. Maybe it’s the Clown Museum, home to creepy wax replicas of movie stars and a massive collection of antique porcelain dolls. Or maybe it’s the terrifyingly real House of Horrors. Or maybe it’s the dead, decaying body left in the midway for all the Wonder Workers to see.

Vanessa Castro’s first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town’s main tourist attraction is strange enough but now a teenage employee - whose defiant picture at the top of the Wonder Wheel went viral that same morning - is missing. As the clues in those seemingly disparate crimes lead her down a mysterious shared path of missing persons that goes back decades, she suspects the seedy rumors surrounding the amusement park’s dark history might just be true. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer’s twisted game?

Vanessa was a police officer in Seattle and recently moved back to her hometown of Seaside to take on the role of deputy police chief.  On her first day on the job, she is called to Wonderland, a tourist traction that keeps the town alive, because the a decaying body, nicknamed Homeless Harry, has been found under the ferris wheel. That's the same ferris wheel Blake, a Wonderland employee, climbed last night and took a selfie and posted on social media before he disappeared. And the security guard didn't show up for work. Are they connected? As Vanessa investigates, she discovers many secrets have been covered up by the police chief, the former deputy police chief and the town. Since she's new in town, she doesn't have the same loyalties and she's determined to find out what's going on.

I've read other books by this author and I thought this one was okay. It is written in third person perspective with a focus on where the action was. I wasn't crazy about the "whodunnit" at the end and thought the reason of why they did what they did wasn't realistic. I found the allure of Bianca, the CEO of Wonderland, unbelievable that she could attract and get pretty well EVERY man who worked there. As a head's up, there is swearing and violence.

Book ~ "Little Secrets" (2020) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family - until their world falls apart the day their son Sebastian is taken.

A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman. This discovery sparks Marin back to life. She's lost her son; she's not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix.

Permanently.

All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret.

It's Christmas and Marin and her young son, Sebastian, are at the market. She is distracted by a phone call and a few seconds later discovers Sebastian is gone. More than a year later, Sebastian has never been found and Marin lives with terrible guilt. Even after the police and FBI give up looking for Sebastian, Marin holds out hope that he will be found and has had a private detective still looking. When the private detective calls her with an update, Marin assumes it's news about Sebastian but it's not ... Derek, her husband, has been having a six month affair with Kenzie, a younger woman. For the first time in a long time, Marin feels something ... rage ... and she wants Kenzie gone permanently. As it turns out, she has a friend who has a friend who can make that happen.

I've read other books by this author and like the others, I liked it. I thought the story moved along at a good pace, going back and forth in time, providing backstories. I found it odd, though, that Marin would blame Kenzie for the affair and want her killed rather than Derek. It is written in third person perspective with a focus on where the action was. As a head's up, there is swearing and violence.

Book ~ "The Butcher" (2014) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ A rash of grisly serial murders plagued Seattle until the infamous "Beacon Hill Butcher" was finally hunted down and killed by police chief Edward Shank in 1985. Now, some thirty years later, Shank, retired and widowed, is giving up his large rambling Victorian house to his grandson Matt, whom he helped raise.

Settling back into his childhood home and doing some renovations in the backyard to make the house feel like his own, Matt, a young up-and-coming chef and restaurateur, stumbles upon a locked crate he’s never seen before. Curious he picks the padlock and makes a discovery so gruesome it will forever haunt him. Faced with this deep dark family secret, Matt must decide whether to keep what he knows buried in the past, go to the police, or take matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile Matt’s girlfriend, Sam, has always suspected that her mother was murdered by the Beacon Hill Butcher - two years after the supposed Butcher was gunned down. As she pursues leads that will prove her right, Sam heads right into the path of Matt’s terrible secret.

Shortly after his wife passes away, Edward decides their house is too much for him and moves into a retirement community. He gives the house to his grandson, Matt, who he and his wife had raised after Matt's mother had died when he was a baby. Matt is grateful to get the house he grew up in. He is a chef and has recently become locally famous. He's under a lot of pressure running the food trucks and restaurant; plus a food channel wants to do a reality show with him. So financially this one less thing for him to worry about. Sam, his girlfriend of three years, expects him to ask her to move in with him and is disappointed when he doesn't.

Sam is an author of true crime books. She is currently writing one about "The Butcher", a violent murderer who was killed in 1985 by the then police chief, Edward. Sam's mother was murdered two years later when she was a baby in the same manner so she's always suspected they never really caught the real murderer. Using Edward as guidance, she has been researching who could be the real killer for her book but more importantly for her own piece of mind.

During renovations, a crate was found buried in Matt's backyard. He is shocked when he discovers what's inside but doesn't know what to do about it. The longer he keeps quiet, though, the more stressed and out of control he becomes.

This is the second book I've read by this author and I liked it.  I liked the writing style and found the story interesting.  I look forward to reading other books by this author.  It is written in third person perspective with a focus on Matt, Sam, Edward and the Butcher. As a head's up, there is swearing and violence.

Book ~ "Things We Do in the Dark" (2022) Jennifer Hillier

From Goodreads ~ When Paris Peralta is arrested in her own bathroom - covered in blood, holding a straight razor, her celebrity husband dead in the bathtub behind her - she knows she'll be charged with murder. But as bad as this looks, it's not what worries her the most. With the unwanted media attention now surrounding her, it's only a matter of time before someone from her long hidden past recognizes her and destroys the new life she's worked so hard to build, along with any chance of a future.

Twenty-five years earlier, Ruby Reyes, known as the Ice Queen, was convicted of a similar murder in a trial that riveted Canada in the early nineties. Reyes knows who Paris really is and when she's unexpectedly released from prison, she threatens to expose all of Paris's secrets. Left with no other choice, Paris must finally confront the dark past she escaped, once and for all.

Because the only thing worse than a murder charge are two murder charges.

Paris is a yoga instructor in Seattle who has been married to Jimmy, a much older actor/comedian who is making a comeback, for a couple of years.  When she arrives home early from a weekend yoga conference, she finds Jimmy dead in a bathtub full of blood.  Though Paris assumes he has committed suicide, she is arrested for the murder of her husband.  Things look even worse when it's discovered that she would inherit almost $50 million at his death.  Did she murder him for his money?

Twenty-five years ago in Toronto, Ruby was a single mother who dated married men in hopes they would leave their wives and take care of her.  She takes her frustrations out on Joey, her young daughter, by abusing her.  After a fight with her latest married beau, Ruby kills him in a fit of rage and is sent to prison for life for his murder.  Joey is sent to live with Ruby's sister and her sister's family north of Toronto, who only take her in because they are paid to.  Once Joey is old enough, she heads back to Toronto and becomes friends and roommates with Drew and Simone.  Joey is tragically killed in a fire in her apartment a couple years later.  Ruby is paroled and Drew, a reporter, decides to do a series of podcasts about her.

This is the first book I've read by this author and I liked it.  I liked the writing style and found the story interesting.  I look forward to reading other books by this author.  It is written in third person perspective with a focus on Paris and Joey.  The story bounces back in time from Paris' story today to Ruby and Joey's story in the past.  As a head's up, there is swearing, violence and child abuse.