Author: Chris Patchell
Narrators: Lisa Stathoplos, Corey Gagne
Series: The Holt Foundation Stories, Book 2
Length: 11 hours 7 minutes
Publisher: Audible Studios
Released: Sep. 27, 2017
Genre: Suspense, Thriller
Becky Kincaid ventures out in the middle of a snowstorm to buy a car seat for her unborn baby and never makes it home. When a second pregnant woman disappears, Marissa Rooney and the team at the Holt Foundation fear a sinister motive lurks behind the crimes.
Lead investigator Seth Crawford desperately searches for the thread that binds the two cases together, knowing that if he fails, another woman will soon be gone. While Seth hunts for clues, a madman has Marissa in his sights and she carries a secret that could tear her whole world apart.
Can Seth stop the killer before he reaps his…dark harvest?
Chris Patchell is the bestselling author of In the Dark, Dark Harvest, and the Indie Reader Discovery Award winning novel Deadly Lies. Having recently left her long-time career in tech to pursue her passion for writing full-time, Chris pens gritty suspense novels set in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her family and two neurotic dogs.
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Lisa Stathoplos has been a professional actor working onstage, in film and commercial VO work for many years as well as narrating books and performing in Audiodramas for Audible.com and Hachette Audio. Most recently, Lisa played Nina Locke in Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’ epic multiple Audie award-winning 13-hour audio drama of their wildly popular graphic novel LOCKE AND KEY produced by Pocket Universe Productions’ AudioComics division and Finalrune Productions for Audible Studios.
Corey Gagne is an audiobook narrator, stage, and voice actor from Portland, Maine. Corey trained at Mountview Theater Conservatory (now Mountview Academy) in London, England, and has appeared on stage in London, New York, Philadelphia, Austin, and Portland. His work as an audiobook narrator includes Inci by Mike Resnick and Tina Gower, The Constable’s Tale by Donald Smith, the Sin du Jour series by Matt Wallace, The Goblin Crown by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, The Twilight of the Gods Series by Christopher G. Nuttall, The Black Wolves of Boston by Wen Spencer, The Builders by Daniel Polanski, and Dark Harvest and In the Dark by Chris Patchell.
Note: Dark Harvest is Book 2 in the series and works best if read after Book 1 simply because you get so much character development that carries over from one book to the next.
I really liked that Brooke, who suffered a brutal kidnapping in Book 1, isn’t all sunshine and roses. She is still walking the hard, dark path to recovery. Marissa, her mom, struggles with how best to help her but she’s doing her best. Brooke’s younger sister, Kelley, puts in a few appearances but we see far less of her than in Book 1 and I missed her. Seth continues to be my favorite character. He’s doing his best to navigate these choppy waters with Marissa and her family, along with his work and memories of his dead wife.
Marissa was hard to root for in this book. She’s really self-centered and I think the author intended for us to see that. However, I don’t see Marissa becoming aware of her flaw and then taking action to better herself. She’s really wrapped up on Seth. He wants to give them all a bit of space to allow Brooke the time to heal and Marissa the time and energy to help Brooke. However, Marissa takes this as rejection. Ugh! Why, Marissa? Why? I wanted to give her a little reality check. I can see why she has a long history of failed relationships.
I also have to mention Marissa in one more thing. This is a MINOR SPOILER. Marissa has failed to take her birth control pill religiously and guess what happens? Yep. This really pissed me off about Marissa. She’s a career woman in her 30s who has basically raised her daughters on her own after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at 16. She’s been down this road before and apparently didn’t learn her lesson. The pill doesn’t work 100% of the time but when you negligently forget to take the pill daily, you’re borrowing trouble.
OK, so let’s talk about the mystery because that’s what really kept me in this book. Someone has been targeting pregnant women but no bodies have turned up. Pretty early on we get to know something about the kidnappers so the majority of the book is a cat and mouse game between the cops and the Holt Foundation and the bad guys. The motivations of the kidnappers were layered and deeper than I initially expected. I really liked that about this mystery. Tori, oh Tori! I wanted things to come out better for you even as I knew you had to pay for what you did. Xander Wilcox, I wonder if you were always so arrogant? Definitely interesting ‘bad guys’.
Seth struggles on several levels in this book. Henry, the computer genius at the Holt Foundation, doesn’t mind breaking laws to get data (phone records, arrest records, utility info, etc.). Seth has retained his cop sense of right and wrong and is mightily uncomfortable about Henry’s activities. However Nathan Holt isn’t interested in pushing Henry to follow the letter of the law. After all, the Holt Foundation is about finding victims before it’s too late. Seth is also struggling to both respect the needs of Marissa’s family as a whole and be supportive to Marissa as his girlfriend. Then he realizes that he hasn’t fully dealt with the death of his wife Holly. He’s a complicated guy and I really enjoyed watching him overcome one hurdle after another.
The ending had a few surprises. Henry! Oh, my! I also like that Seth has wrapped up some of the lose threads of his life. I would have liked further character growth for Marissa because she is a twit in this book. 4/5 stars.
The Narration: Lisa Stathoplos and Corey Gagne did a really good job with this book. I really like Gagne as Seth and Stathoplos has a perfect voice for Marissa. She also does a great job with the voices for Kelley and Brooke making all 3 ladies distinct but still sound related. I especially liked the aggravated, arrogant voice for Xander. 5/5 stars.
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Chris Patchell. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.
Guest Post from Author Chris Patchell
Confessions of a Geeky Nerd
Thank God I was a geek in high school. Imagine all the time I could have wasted hanging out with my popular friends instead of spending time with a much more entertaining and entertaining crowd made up of my imaginary friends. The people in my head were always more interesting than the kids in my classes. They talked about things that mattered, shared my interests and points of view, and they were ever so much more compliant. As a writer, I still talk to my imaginary friends most every day. They’re the characters who inhabit my books. I do have to admit that as an adult, the people in my head are more inclined to misbehave. They say things that I would never say. They swear. They lie. They rarely do the things that I want to do. Worst of all… they’ve developed minds of their own! The nerve. Oy!
The small-town world inside my classrooms were filled with teenage politics, but the world in my head—the one that filled my boundless imagination was so much bigger and brighter. It was far more engaging than eleventh grade chemistry, much to my father’s chagrin. So, while I should have been learning the periodic table of elements, I was busy scribbling down stories, which one of my ACTUAL friends would read in physics. The more she read, the more I wrote. It still works like that today.
All those hours I refused to fritter away at pep rallies and high school dances, I spent instead building my imagination. All of which has made me a better writer. And as a famed doctor (Dr. Seuss) once said, “Oh the places you will go.”
The gift of a being a nerd is the ideas that overtake you. So, when my daughter says, “Hey Mom, I’m going to build a nuclear power plant in the garage,” I say, “Cool beans. Don’t blow up the house.” Now I know she’s not actually going to build a nuclear power plant, but the ability to allow her express her creativity pushes her beyond her current limits, and she ends up learning things she otherwise wouldn’t learn. Sometimes I’ll say “Great. What’s your plan?” And for the more achievable things she envisions, she has one. We’ll go over it together. I’ll make a few suggestions, and she’ll be off to the races.
Writing a book is a little like that. If I actually knew how much work there was in writing a novel when I first sat down to my keyboard, I’m not sure I ever would have done it. But the power of imagination to take me to places I’d never envisioned before, and the geeky determination to stick with it, even when I sometimes feels like I will never reach the end, has catapulted me into this crazy journey that has taken over my professional life. For the better.
Win an Amazon Echo Dot (2 winners!). Runs Feb. 11th-25th, 2018. Open internationally (via Amazon US or UK)!
The Holt Foundation Stories Giveaway: Amazon Echo Dot
In the Dark, Book 1
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Dark Harvest, Book 2
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