None Shall Sleep

I have medium-to-good feelings on this one. I love Emma as a character, and Simon is a great antagonist, but...I don't know. I just felt like I was reading Silence of the Lambs-lite, but admittedly I am not the target audience! I would have devoured this as a teen and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to any teen reader who is interested in true crime/thrillers.

I do think that, narratively speaking, having a few chapters from the killer's POV and naming said killer was kind of a misstep, and I also wish that Bell would have been more fleshed out as a character. It really seemed like he was just there to be like “See? Emma isn't Clarice! She has a buddy!” (I haven't read SotL in a while, but I don't think she had a consistent buddy helping her). Also also, I wouldn't use the 80s setting as a selling point to anyone who likes stories set in the 80s, as it basically just serves the purpose of making sure no one has easy access to cell phones/internet/etc. Which is fine by me - I much prefer that to the text being like “Remember New Coke???” but it is something to consider.

TL;DR version: good-not-great for this reader, but I will definitely check out the next one! Overall, 3.5 fancypants pretentious serial killers out of 5. And now I want to re-watch the Hannibal show for the third or fourth time.