The Vanishing Season

Familiar characters but a new vibe

I feel like I know this group of characters, but this one took it to a new level. I couldn't put it down but this one was more heart-wrenchimg than suspenseful.

[b:The Vanishing Season 40173806 The Vanishing Season (The Collector, #4) Dot Hutchison https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542060712l/40173806.SY75.jpg 62323493]The End of a SeriesIf you haven't picked up any of the books in this series please go back and start at book one. If you don't you might be able to follow along but you will miss so much of the story it will be a shame. The Vanishing Season is the final installment to Dot Hutchinson's The Collector Series. The kidnapping of blonde-haired, blue-eyed eight-year-old Brooklyn Mercer throws FBI agent Eliza Sterling and co-worker/boyfriend Agent, Brandon Eddison, into the limelight.Battling memories of the abduction of his eight-year-old sister decades earlier, Brandon and other retired agents never able to move past seventeen other cold cases, come together to stop a string of kidnappings spanning the United States and lasting decades.This story is masterfully told from the perspective of Eliza, who physically resembles the victims to a T. Her likeness forces her both into the shadows to avoid raising painful memories with the families as well as into the forefront of the investigation when the Crimes Against Children team needs to force their hand.I enjoy novels that offer more than a singular storyline, and this book has many — from Eliza's struggle to overcome an abusive past, Bran's unbridled rage and pain at losing his sister, and the Butterfly girls moving past the trauma of being held captive by the Gardener, to Priya's acceptance of her sister's murder. This fourth book in the series ties up all running plot lines.My only criticism was the final chapter, which dumped a lot of information on the reader with a jarring shift in point of view. That aside, The Vanishing Season was an engrossing novel full of fear, compassion, and love. I will miss this flawed and scarred cast. I hope that this author puts out more books in this genre because she has a way of drawing her readers in and making them stay hooked. This was a solid four-star read and would have been a five I wasn't sad to see this series be done.

1: The Butterfly Garden ★★★★★
#2: Roses of May ★★★
#3: The Summer Children ★★★★
#4: The Vanishing Season ★★

This review can also be found on my blog.
disclaimer: I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for review consideration. All of the opinions presented below are my own.

First and foremost, I need to give my thanks to Rachel who has been with me for every step of this journey (I also reread her review of The Summer Children and realized it said everything I was trying to say below, but better). By which I mean she has put up with my endless livetexting of this godforsaken novel and my incredulity whilst reading it. Which comes across as rude, but I'm not sure I would have made it through without someone to vent to.

While writing negative reviews can be freeing in a way, I've been dreading writing this one. I absolutely adored Dot Hutchison's first novel in this series. The Butterfly Garden was everything I wanted in a thriller, and I was absolutely blown away by it. I could not put it down! Shortly thereafter I read The Roses of May and while my review was glowing, my star rating slowly dropped the more thought I gave to it. The Summer Children peaked in quality a bit more, but the depth of focus given to the agents' relationships, which many had critiqued in The Roses of May, finally began to irk me. The Vanishing Season takes it to a whole other level.

The problem with these books is that they force you to completely suspend your disbelief regarding professionalism and appropriate workplace behavior. There's a time and a place for cutesy stuff like this, but FBI agents actively working a case ain't it. It's to the point where I hesitate to call this a thriller, or a mystery. While the last two books at least had some sense of danger and urgency, The Vanishing Season is honestly nothing but fanservice. The tonal shift is enough to give you whiplash.

I'm not saying that books need to mirror reality perfectly and most thrillers do require you to suspend your disbelief a bit, but it would take some serious mental gymnastics to think that a law enforcement team could actually function like this without crashing and burning, or at least getting a serious talking-to from an internal affairs department. I lost track of all the things I could not believe were happening. Agent cuddle parties. They all live next to each other! Always joking about the boy being outnumbered by LOL GIRLS (realistic but annoying). Her boss kisses her on the CHEEK? Literally everyone talks about the MC looking like an 8-year-old girl constantly and I'm seriously done with women being infantilized.

Aside from that, the excess of unnecessary detail was... overwhelming. I wish I had highlighted examples as I came across them because there were so many. In instances where a sentence or two would have conveyed a process just fine, a full page is used instead. There was so much infodumping that I just didn't understand, and it came across as the epitome of telling instead of showing.

It sucks because between all the stuff I didn't like, there was so much promise. The crime of the week could have been so much more interesting had it been expanded on, but it became more of a background to everyone's personal problems. There was a really interesting exploration of realizing one had been abused that would have hit so much harder if it hadn't been crammed together with a dozen other things. I feel like this book just tried to do everything at once and ended up shooting itself in the foot because of it. It's a bummer because we all know Dot Hutchison is an incredible writer; The Butterfly Garden was kind of a masterpiece imo. The rest of the series was just an entirely different kind of writing.

So, unfortunately this really wasn't for me and I can't say I recommend it in its current state – I can only hope that some additional edits were made between the ARC and the finished copy. I guess if you're obsessed with the characters and want to see them spend all their time goofing around or having Serious Emotional Moments together, this is the book for you. If you're looking for an actual thriller/mystery, keep looking.