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novel by Katee Robert!
The Surviving Girls
Hidden Sins #3
By Katee Robert
Releasing May 29th, 2018
Montlake Romance
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A fierce survivor and a fearless FBI agent battle a copycat serial killer in a gripping thriller from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Katee Robert.
Twelve years ago, Lei Zhang and her friend Emma Nilsson miraculously lived through the notorious Sorority Row Murders that left twenty-one of their sisters dead. Still wrestling with the trauma but finally out of the limelight, Lei and Emma are now devoted to helping other victims find closure. But most disturbing for Lei—beyond the gut-wrenching survivor guilt—is that the killer was her boyfriend. He’s behind bars, but she’ll never lower her guard again.
When a copycat killer targets Lei and Emma, FBI Agent Dante Young is put in charge of anticipating the sociopath’s every move. But what he doesn’t expect is his immediate and overpowering attraction to Lei. The closer they get to each other, the more desperate and terrifying the questions become: Who wants to finish what the killer started—and why?
Now Agent Young vows to protect Lei at all costs. If they have any chance of a future together, first they have to stay alive…
In The Surviving Girls (Hidden Sins #3) by Katee Robert, Lei Zhang and her best friend were lucky to survive the Sorority Row murders that ended with twenty-one of their sorority sisters dead. Yet, now years later, there's a copycat killer determined to make sure Lei and Emma don't survive this time. Luckily though, they have FBI agent Dante Young on their side and he's not about to let the killer get anywhere near the women again. Will Dante be able to keep them safe or will he lose Lei before he even has a chance to win her heart?
I love this series by Ms. Robert and I've got to say that she's penned another very thrilling, fast-paced, enthralling read in this book where the main characters have interesting back stories; and the dialogue drew me in from the very beginning, as the heroine is determined to make sure others get closure. Then again, she feels responsible for what went down years ago, so why shouldn't she be helping others the way she does? It's her penance. However, it was from the moment the hero and heroine met where this story gets very interesting, as the heroine doesn't trust easily and isn't afraid to go head-to-head with the agents to discover all they know. Will she and Emma be able to help them?
As for the dialogue, it was intense due to the main characters back stories and everything they go through on their journey to happy ever after. Will the killer get to Emma and Lei? Will the heroine and her best friend be thrown off balance by how far the killer is willing to go to get to them? Moreover, the heroine is resilient, courageous and I liked that she gave the hero a chance, even though it would be understandable if she never gave another man a chance after her last boyfriend turned out to be a psychopath. I also liked the tight bond she shares with her best friend and that she would do anything to help Emma get through the tough times they face. Yet, what I liked most of all about the heroine was how far she was willing to go to put a stop to the person responsible for the latest killings. Will Lei and Dante find a way to take down the person targeting the women?
While Dante, he's hard-working, fearless, a good FBI agent, confident and I liked how protective he was of the heroine. I also liked the challenge the heroine provided the hero because she doesn't trust easily and isn't about to let anyone get as close as her ex once did. Will Dante be able to win Lei over and show her that she can trust him? Yet, what I liked most of all about the hero is the lengths he was willing to go to in order to put a stop to the person targeting Lei, especially since the killer is upping his game with everything he does.
Overall, Ms. Robert has delivered an absolutely riveting and wild ride in this book, which was filled with plenty of suspense and a good dose of sweet romance; where the chemistry between this couple was powerful and kept getting stronger the more the hero proved to Lei he was someone she could trust; and the ending had me worried for the main characters because of the way things go when they finally face off against the bad guy, but in the end left me completely satisfied and smiling because of how things work out for Lei and Dante. I would recommend The Surviving Girls by Katee Robert, if you enjoy romantic suspense, the sexy protector trope or books by authors Laura Griffin, Laura Kaye, Kaylea Cross and Cynthia Eden.
I love this series by Ms. Robert and I've got to say that she's penned another very thrilling, fast-paced, enthralling read in this book where the main characters have interesting back stories; and the dialogue drew me in from the very beginning, as the heroine is determined to make sure others get closure. Then again, she feels responsible for what went down years ago, so why shouldn't she be helping others the way she does? It's her penance. However, it was from the moment the hero and heroine met where this story gets very interesting, as the heroine doesn't trust easily and isn't afraid to go head-to-head with the agents to discover all they know. Will she and Emma be able to help them?
As for the dialogue, it was intense due to the main characters back stories and everything they go through on their journey to happy ever after. Will the killer get to Emma and Lei? Will the heroine and her best friend be thrown off balance by how far the killer is willing to go to get to them? Moreover, the heroine is resilient, courageous and I liked that she gave the hero a chance, even though it would be understandable if she never gave another man a chance after her last boyfriend turned out to be a psychopath. I also liked the tight bond she shares with her best friend and that she would do anything to help Emma get through the tough times they face. Yet, what I liked most of all about the heroine was how far she was willing to go to put a stop to the person responsible for the latest killings. Will Lei and Dante find a way to take down the person targeting the women?
While Dante, he's hard-working, fearless, a good FBI agent, confident and I liked how protective he was of the heroine. I also liked the challenge the heroine provided the hero because she doesn't trust easily and isn't about to let anyone get as close as her ex once did. Will Dante be able to win Lei over and show her that she can trust him? Yet, what I liked most of all about the hero is the lengths he was willing to go to in order to put a stop to the person targeting Lei, especially since the killer is upping his game with everything he does.
Overall, Ms. Robert has delivered an absolutely riveting and wild ride in this book, which was filled with plenty of suspense and a good dose of sweet romance; where the chemistry between this couple was powerful and kept getting stronger the more the hero proved to Lei he was someone she could trust; and the ending had me worried for the main characters because of the way things go when they finally face off against the bad guy, but in the end left me completely satisfied and smiling because of how things work out for Lei and Dante. I would recommend The Surviving Girls by Katee Robert, if you enjoy romantic suspense, the sexy protector trope or books by authors Laura Griffin, Laura Kaye, Kaylea Cross and Cynthia Eden.
Copyright © 2018
Katee Robert
Lei
couldn’t breathe. Her chest closed painfully as if she’d been knocked flat on
her back, and her lungs burned with the need for oxygen. Somewhere in the tiny
rational corner of her mind, she knew there was nothing really
wrong with her, but rational thought had no place in the midst of her panic.
He’s
back. Emma was right all along and he’s coming for us.
Stop.
You’re
spiraling.
Travis
Berkley is still in jail. This is a copycat, and no matter how bad a copycat
is, he can’t be worse than Travis. You survived before. You will this time,
too.
A whine cut through her
thoughts, and then Saul was there, nudging her hand with his cool nose. She
inhaled sharply, suddenly aware that everyone in the room was staring at her.
The Feds had the blank-slate expression she’d come to associate with cops when
they were in a difficult situation. Emma looked at her as if she was on the
verge of her own panic attack.
Lei stroked her hand
over Saul’s head, forming a wall of indisputable facts in her mind to keep the
fear at bay. She wasn’t twenty-one anymore, only a couple of years out of the
stifling family home she’d grown up on, still drunk on freedom and the
realization that she could do anything she wanted to with her future.
She’d been an idiot. A
child who was playing dress-up without realizing the pitfalls of adulthood.
Though
most pitfalls don’t come attached to a knife.
Lei wasn’t that girl
anymore. She’d seen the worst Travis Berkley could offer and had the scars to
show for it. She could shoot. She could fight. She’d worked with enough cops
over the course of her career as a trainer and search team that she had an
inside view to how their minds worked.
She would not lose herself to terror.
Another stroke to
Saul’s head and she was able to speak. “How close to the original murders are
the details?”
Agent Young exchanged a
glance with his partner and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
His big hands dangled between his legs, and she distantly noted that he had
really firm thighs beneath the expensive slacks. He spoke slowly, as if gauging
her response. “We haven’t had a chance to check the original case files, but
the big details are almost identical. The murders were performed in the same
way—girls kept in a main room and taken out individually. We think he snuck in
through a window, because their condo was on the second floor and he used a
knife from the kitchen.”
She could almost hear
Travis’s voice in her head, even after all these years. Let
me in, Lei-Lei. I have a surprise for you. Stupid. She’d been so
incredibly stupid, swayed by a pretty face and a boy her parents would approve
of who made her feel. Smart, athletic, the right
dollar amount in his family’s bank account. Someone bright and colorful and
checking all the right boxes.
Since she couldn’t
bring herself to ask if one of the girls let him in, she focused on the rest.
“If this is a fan, he must have been in contact with Travis at some point.” She
put her hand on Emma’s leg when her friend flinched at his name. The Feds
didn’t react, which made her sigh. “But you already knew that. You don’t need
me telling you how to do your job. What is it you
need?”
Another loaded look
between them. They’d obviously been partners for a long time, because they
managed to convey an entire conversation’s worth of talking in a single look.
Again, it was Agent
Young who took the lead. “We can find the details of the case easily enough,
along with your accounts, but what I’d like to know is your take on Travis.”
“Because I dated him.”
She stated it baldly, as if the fact she’d slept with a murderer was something
she’d dealt with and moved on from. As if the fact didn’t still keep her up at
night, moving beneath her skin until she wanted to take a wire brush to her
body. There weren’t enough hot showers and bleach baths in the world to change
the fact she’d willingly been with him. She could never take that back.
“Because you—both of
you—have known him longer than anyone.”
“Agent Young—”
“Dante.”
She stopped short. Dante. It fit him somehow—strong and a little bit intense.
He masked it well, but there was fire lurking in the depths of his dark eyes,
in the way he clenched his fists as they spoke about Travis. She shouldn’t be
forming personal opinions about any man, let alone one connected with the case.
Lei’s track record had more than proven that fact.
While she was still
trying to process her strange and seriously inconvenient reaction to him, Emma
had found her voice. She spoke softly, her southern accent giving her breathy
tone a pretty lilt. She had a Dolly Parton thing going for her—at least before
Dolly got a little crazy for plastic surgery—and Emma wasn’t above playing up
the sweet-southern-belle thing when it suited her. “Travis Berkley is a
sociopath with a healthy dose of narcissistic personality disorder—which you
already know because you read the file. Everything
is in the file. We have been doing our best to get past what he did to us—to
our sisters—and that means forgetting as much as possible.”
Maybe
for Emma. Lei couldn’t afford to forget. It had
been her mistake that tipped the first domino that destroyed so many lives.
While it was possible Travis could have gotten into the house on his own, she’d
been the fool who let him in her window.
The knowledge made her
hands shake. Emma might want to do everything to avoid that gory walk down
memory lane, but Lei didn’t have that option. Guilt wrapped around her throat,
tightening, ever tightening. “You have something specific you’re here for.”
Agent Rowan leaned
forward, a clear indication that she’d take it from there. As much as Lei
wanted the calming force Dante—Agent Young—seemed to emanate, she turned almost
gratefully to the redhead. She eyed her as if Lei was a particularly
interesting bug. “We’re theorizing this fucker—”
“Clarke.”
She didn’t look at him.
“These women have seen enough, Dante. You know as well as I do that a few
choice curse words aren’t going to have them scrambling for their sniffing
salts.”
Lei understood now why
Britton had paired these two together. Clarke was the blunt force designed to
set a person back on their heels so they were too busy reacting to her foul
mouth to stop and think that there might be a shrewd mind behind those
deceptively big blue eyes. Dante on the other hand, was a cool summer mist,
unruffling feathers and putting everyone in the room at ease with his calm
presence. Both agents would be underestimated in different ways, which was only
to their benefit.
Clever.
She eyed the dogs on
the floor. Neither of them seemed overly concerned with the Feds in the room. Good. Lei had more than proven she could be fooled, but
Saul couldn’t. Every time he reacted poorly to a person, she paid attention—and
most of the time something eventually came to light to prove her dog’s
instincts correct.
Clarke followed her
gaze and then refocused on Lei and then Emma. “A lot of sociopaths think
they’re smarter than everyone else in the room—some of them are even right—and
Travis sure as hell falls into the latter category. His IQ is 167, and from all
accounts, prison hasn’t broken him. What we need to know is if he’d encourage a
fan to take these steps.”
“Of course he would.
He’s a fucking psycho,” Emma snarled.
“What do you think?”
Clarke was looking at Lei.
Because
why not? Even now, cops thought Lei had some
kind of inside track to the way Travis’s mind worked. She’d dated him for
months, had slept with him countless times, and so she must have some insider
knowledge to explain how the golden boy went so very, very wrong.
She hadn’t been able to
give them a satisfactory answer then. She didn’t have one now, either. But she
could try.
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Katee
Robert learned to tell her stories at her grandpa’s knee. Her 2015 title, The
Marriage Contract, was a RITA finalist, and RT Book Reviews named it 'a
compulsively readable book with just the right amount of suspense and
tension." When not writing sexy contemporary and romantic suspense,
she spends her time playing imaginary games with her children, driving her
husband batty with what-if questions, and planning for the inevitable zombie
apocalypse.
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