Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Lock the doors, check the windows, stoke the fire and keep the lights on. It’s winter, and a new kind of predator has just come out of hibernation…”

This book was fantastic!! It sounded great from the synopsis alone, but reading it from start to finish was something else entirely! I was very pleasantly surprised by this dark, unnerving crime mystery and I have now made a note to read every single book in this series. I love finding new authors in one of my favourite genres, so I look forward to seeing what comes next from JK Ellem. I’m super happy to be sharing my review of book one in this series, A Winter’s Kill!

About the book

The winters in Willow Falls, Iowa are cold, brutal and unforgiving. And so is the town’s newest visitor. Except he’s not passing through. He’s here on vacation, for some fun and he’s going to stay for a while.

They call him “Robin Hood”, a winter serial killer who has left a gruesome trail of horror and death across four Midwestern states. His grisly trademark is skewering his victims to tree trunks using a hunting crossbow.

Now he’s here…

For ex-FBI Special Agent Carolyn Ryder, winter is the season to reflect, to come home, to take stock and to grieve. Willow Falls for her is filled with sorrow and regret. She has returned to her hometown to bury her mother after a long battle with illness. Her sister blames Carolyn for not caring, for not being there for her and their mother, for being a cold, dispassionate person who was more interested in building her career than in the family.

In the close-knit community of Willow Falls, Ryder has no reputation, no authority and no say with the townsfolk. To them she’s a stranger, an outsider, someone who can’t be trusted.

Then the first body is discovered; a local, a teenage girl found almost crucified to a white pine deep in the forest.

The local police aren’t equipped to deal with something like this, yet they stubbornly refuse Ryder’s help. With no support, Ryder decides to go it alone, to follow the clues herself, to trust her instincts. Slowly she starts to formulate a theory as to who the killer is. But no one will believe her. It’s too incredible to conceive.

The beginning

Oh my god, what an opening chapter! It seems weird how I’ve read very few books about serial killers even though Dexter is my absolute favourite T.V. series. (I’ve still not read the books – making a mental note to fix that, ASAP!) But right from the start, I knew I would love this book. The gore, man. I would have loved to have seen my face as I read through that first meeting with our unnamed killer, and reading from his point of view made everything ten times as gripping. It was truly brilliant and I couldn’t wait to find out more about this mystery character as things progressed. Following this killer opening (pun intended) the story continues from the POV of Carolyn Ryder, an ex-FBI Special Agent. She’s recently returned to Willow Falls to grieve and reflect, and to bury her mother who had sadly passed. The character development in this book is fantastic, and already I felt like Carolyn was fully formed in my mind, that I knew so much about her and her life. I couldn’t wait to see how her life would intertwine with that of a serial killer in this small town… Such a brilliant start to the book!

“He’d much rather take something of value, a person with dreams and aspirations. Someone who had a future. The prospect of destroying someone’s carefully constructed future was what drove him to do what he did.”

I loved how tense the book felt in parts as news of a mangled body in the forest reaches the town’s police department. I was so hooked already. Every now and then, we read from the killer’s perspective, and the way he thinks about his kills was creepy as hell. He thinks of them as works of art, each planned with precision for maximum impact. This character absolutely fascinated me, even though he was still a nameless, faceless entity. How the author has built up this guy in such a short space of time, someone to be feared, someone who is capable of the unthinkable, someone you absolutely wouldn’t want to cross, was just so mind-blowing to me. I loved how many people in this town would have interacted with him in their every day lives, not knowing the kind of predator he was underneath it all. God, it gave me chills! There were so many scenes that made me curious and I had question upon question building up in my mind about a number of different characters. Who could be trusted? And who was safe in this town where there was rarely any crime, where everyone knows everyone?

The middle

Due to the time she’s spent away from Willow Falls, Carolyn doesn’t really get a friendly reception from the town’s inhabitants upon her return, especially from the small local police department. But it soon becomes clear they’re in desperate need of outside help, and Carolyn takes it upon herself to do some digging, to join the search for this ruthless killer and to find out more about his victim. She was ex-FBI after all. She had contacts. She could help. But the more we dig alongside Carolyn, the bigger this case gets… She starts to feel eyes on her, and it’s clear someone is watching her. Could it be the killer? Could he have her in his sights? There’s a tense chase scene; after she spots a silhouette of a person watching her, then fleeing, she has to act. It could be him. She could stop him. The danger was delicious, the tension quickly ramps up and I once again felt the terror I felt when we first hear about the killer’s brutal acts. This stranger escapes this time, but it planted even more questions and theories in my mind. Carolyn needed to watch her back now. (Breathe, Em. It’s just fiction 😬)

“No matter what precautions people take in securing their home, anyone evil enough and determined enough can always find a way to get inside.”

Three years. Thirteen victims. Our killer now nicknamed ‘Robin Hood’ after there’s evidence upon evidence of this killer using a crossbow to hunt down his victims. I didn’t think it was possible to feel more repulsed by this guy, but the author manages to keep on building his character so well to the point where I felt nauseous. I was mesmerised by the immense detail the author puts into investigating this killer, the evidence against him, how these characters meticulously go through every detail of the crime scene photos, fire off their own theories and plot their next moves. I was fully absorbed in all of it. I loved meeting new characters with their own stories to tell, stories that could potentially point Carolyn in the right direction, snippets of information shared that could help her piece things together. But teaming up with hunter, Beau Hodges, was a part of the book I really enjoyed. He knew how hunters and their prey worked. He was the perfect person to assist Carolyn and I loved his character. I just hoped they could work fast enough to prevent another murdered woman.

The end

There are a few red herrings around here which I really liked. I do love being thrown off the scent in a book like this! It caused my original theories to to crumble, but new ones to form. The killer’s true identity, when it was revealed, wasn’t really a huge shock to me, but I weirdly didn’t care all that much because everything had been written so well. And what made things even more tense was the fact that Carolyn had found herself in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. The fear that radiated from her in these moments well and truly spread to me too. But somehow, knowing who this killer was earlier than I’d expected, made things even more tension-filled. I was watching this character more closely now and I feared him so much more. Things were obviously about to get a hell of a lot worse for Carolyn and my god I was ready for it. Their plan of action to catch the killer had changed slightly because of what Carolyn now knew. I was well and truly gripped here and I loved it. The hunt was on and I was more than ready for the chase.

“But monsters do exist in real life. They aren’t imaginary. Carolyn had seen them. And now she wanted to find this particular monster really badly.”

Carolyn and Hodges made such a brilliant team, their meticulous planning everything I love, their hunt through the snowy forest exciting and unpredictable. Their showdown with the killer was brilliant, and I was cheering them on from the sidelines. It was fast-paced, dangerous and thrilling, my eyes were glued to each page as I tried to work out what the outcome would be before it actually happened. I loved the description, so vivid and colourful. I could honestly read this author’s writing every day and never get bored! There were some great surprises with a side story we’d followed alongside the main one, but this was something I wish had been explored further along the way. It felt that as it was, the story would have been just as brilliant without it. Even so, I adored this story. Truly brilliant, and now a new author on my radar! If you love a serial killer mystery or even if you love crime/thriller in general, get this on on your TBR. I can’t wait to read the rest of the books in this series!

Overall thoughts

A Winter’s Kill is an exceptionally well-written serial killer mystery that will constantly give you that one-more-chapter feeling. I had a blast with it! I adored the characters; our main character, Carolyn, returns to Willow Falls as an ex-FBI agent and gets pulled into a murder case unlike any other, not knowing the horrific things she was about to see, or just how much danger she’d soon be in. I was fascinated with our serial killer in this one, a repulsive, horrifying predator you’ll fear right from the start, and then fear even more when their identity is revealed. The book perfectly blends a chilling, mysterious plot with uncomfortable, bloody crime scenes and such intricate detective work. Tense, gripping and absorbing. I really enjoyed my time with this book and can’t wait to read the next in the series!

You can grab your own copy of A Winter’s Kill right now over on Amazon, available in eBook, Audiobook and paperback. Make sure you’re following the author over on Instagram for more updates!

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