Name: Secrets of a Serial Killer
ISBN: 9780008399962

Rosie Walker

An edge-of-your-seat serial killer thriller that you won’t be able to put down!

Secrets of a Serial Killer

Lauren Tabor

** spoiler alert **
           I had really high hopes for this one. I mean the title has the word secret and serial killer in it, so how could I be disappointed????? Well, here we are. The beginning of this was so boring, I swear nothing happened and now that I've finished it I could not tell you one solid thing that happened before the halfway point of this. Ultimately this was about a legacy of serial killers-which sounds way more exciting that it actually was-and about a girl who gets kidnapped by the most recent "protege." This reminded me of an episode of Criminal Minds but the off brand version. (I love CM, so I'm not bashing the show at all, it just felt like an episode I've seen before). This had way too many cheesy villain tropes for me. I know Criminal Minds is a tv show but at least it's realistic (to a point)...I hated when the parents went out on their own to the Asylum without calling the police first. How ridiculous?? Also the fact that police were 100% USELESS was so infuriating. And Tony being an ex-cop did nothing to help anyone. 
Alsooooo did the police not question the two kids AT ALL. They were LITERALLY in the room with Zoe, the real life 'mr. x', and Alexander and they didn't think it would be necessary to get the FULL story??? The ONLY 'twist'(it wasn't even a twist, just a last minute shocker) in this whole book was at the very end when Thomas overheard the nurses talking about the woman they found unconscious in the asylum and how she shared an adjoining room with Zoes and that whole situation could've been entirely avoided with talking to the kids. They heard EVERYTHING. Zoe was there...she knows what really happened. I'll admit that the end shook me a bit, but then once I thought about it I saw that it could have been so easily resolved. 
And the fact that they kept getting pointed to Paul what's his face because Alexander planted evidence against him and all they had to do was TALK TO THE KIDS. THEY WERE THERE WHEN ZOE STABBED HIM IN THE EYE. They didn't believe that Zoe really stabbed him because Paul wasn't stabbed, but Thomas and Maggie WERE THERE. They saw the whole thing. They were the best witnesses in this whole case and were they just written off because they were kids?? That whole situation is so annoying. 
What happened to the other woman in the caravan? After Zoe is kidnapped and taken to the Caravan she realizes there is another girl in there with her. What happened to her? Were we supposed to figure that out on our own? Was is his mother? That makes no sense...what would be the point to that. He also explained that she lived in the asylum, so why would she be in the caravan? 
What did they do with the bodies after she killed them? She evaded the authorities for so long and they never found any bodies, but we never get to find out where she was hiding them. 
The little blogs did absolutely nothing for this story. Everything in the articles was told to us again either by Bertha or by Alexander so what was the point? 
There were no plot twists which was really disappointing. No mystery to be solved, we were given so much information. The first half of the book goes so far as to label certain sections as 'Him'...so I assumed that it was someone we already knew and that would be the twist, but then later his mother called him Alexander and then all of a sudden the sections were just labeled 'Alexander.' So I don't see what the point was in that. 

This book did nothing for me. 


Thank you to NetGalley and One More Chapter for letting me review this book early in exchange for an honest review.

chloe mcpherson

Netgalley review copy

Secrets of a serial killer by Rosie walker
3/5

A serial killer has been terrorising Lancaster for decades, longer than should ever have been possible. The police are baffled, eluded at every turn by the killer whose victims span generations. Speculation is rife among the true crime forums; is someone passing on their gruesome trade?

Every local mother's worst nightmare has become Helen Summerton's reality; he’s taken her daughter, Zoe. As the clock runs down so do her chances of survival. Can Helen unearth the secrets of the killer before it’s too late?

Serial Killer, Creepy old lunatic asylum, Missing teenager, Two kids egging each other on to explore 
All the ingredients for a great creepy thriller. And it was, in parts. The beginning. And the end. The serial killer who adopts other people's identities is an interesting premise. But we only got a small glance at this. 

Secrets of a Serial Killer is a debut novel, a good one, but not a great one. I can see the potential but it could be greatly improved.