Even better than the first book

Emma is an investigative journalist who just published her first book about a paedophile ring that was lead from a boys’ home. The police investigated the accusations and the main perpetrators are finally locked up in prison. Now she’s writing her second book about the kidnapping of lord Fitzhume’s granddaughter, the case we followed in the previous book in this series. While she’s at her agent, a woman commits suicide in front of them. Her last words before she jumps off the roof, are to Emma: “You need to find her. Find Sally. Tell her, I’m sorry.” Of course, Emma can’t let this go. The woman prepared a whole box for her that contains old diaries and books with references to Wicca and pagan cults. 15 years ago, when they were 14, Natalie and 3 other girls sneaked off into the woods at night but only 3 of them came out. But Sally Curtis was never heard of seen again. The investigation leads to the army base where the girls lived and into the occult
At the end of the previous book, Jack (the liaison police officer in that case) told Emma that they discovered footage of her sister Anna, who disappeared 20 years ago when she 9, on the hard drive of an infamous child molester. So, 4 years after she went missing she was still alive. This feeds her hope that her sister might be still alive but it also raises more questions than ever.

Don’t judge a book by its cover, is most true for this series because although I like the stories, the covers are dreadful. This 2nd book is even better than the 1st one. The story is very well-paced; neither too slow nor too fast. The author steers you professionally in the wrong direction, only to pull off a surprising conclusion out of her high hat. Well, I kinda guessed part of it as the text already hinted to some of it, but I was well satisfied by this ending. I do think that 4 more books to conclude the story arc about Anna’s disappearance is a bit too long to keep up the interest.
At first, I thought it strange that the main character in this series is called Hunter, as was the case in the previous book in another series that I read yesterday. Thinking about it, I saw the same name more often for detectives. Is this a new trend? But if you look at the name of the author and then see Emma Hunter, you understand that the books are actually written by Emma herself.
There are some endearing, funny moments when Jack’s daughter expects a horse for Christmas but also very true depictions of heartache, tragedy and feelings of guilt that’s felt by family members of people with Alzheimer.
I thank Harper Collins, One More Chapter and Netgalley for the free ARC they provided and this is my honest and unbiased review of it.