Little Girls Sleeping

He looked down at the little girl, sleeping peacefully, her arms wrapped around a teddy bear. He knew he was the only one who could save her. He could let her sleep forever.

An eight-year-old girl, Chelsea Compton, is missing in Pine Valley, California and for Detective Katie Scott it’s a cruel reminder of the friend who disappeared from summer camp twenty years ago. Unable to shake the memories, Katie vows she won’t rest until she discovers what happened to Chelsea.

But as Katie starts to investigate, the case reveals itself to be much bigger and more shocking than she feared. Hidden deep in the forest she unearths a makeshift cemetery: a row of graves, each with a brightly coloured teddy bear.

Katie links the graves to a stack of missing-persons cases involving young girls—finding a pattern no one else has managed to see. Someone in Pine Valley has been taking the town’s daughters for years, and Katie is the only one who can stop them.

And then another little girl goes missing, snatched from the park near her home.

Katie’s still haunted by the friend she failed to protect, and she’ll do anything to stop the killer striking again—but can she find the little girl before it’s too late?

My rating: four stars out of five 

Katie is fresh home from Afghanistan, trying to settle back into civilian life, unsure what she will be doing. Before she left she was a policewoman, but she isn't sure she wants to go back there. In the meantime, she's working for her uncle, the sheriff of Pine Valley, California.

She somehow breaks wide open the case of two missing girls.

What follows is a twisty turning mystery.

At times it was a bit unbelievable and the ending felt a little unreal, but it was still a really good book. I plan on reading at least the next in this series. I love Katie and her amazing dog Cisco. Watching her rebuild relationships with the people that she grew up with is interesting.

Stand out quotes: 

“Places change all the time. People change. A way of life changes. You can’t freeze time or expect things to stay the same. They never will, no matter how hard you try to hold onto them.”

Relaxing was key at the moment the anxiety struck. You couldn’t fight it. You couldn’t reason with it. And it wouldn’t make you promises that it wouldn’t come back. Anxiety, you’re not welcome here anymore.

Light pushed away darkness. Light would ceaselessly drown the darkness at every opportunity if you knew where to look.

Although military training and police work have made an indelible impact on my life—my own personal defining moments—they still haven’t prepared me for the evil that lurks within the mind of a serial killer.