The Family Tree

Liz Catalano has receive a unique gift ... an ancestry kit from her cousin and roommate. What she discovers is shocking! Nothing lines up with what she's been told since she was a child. The only thing she was never told ... she was adopted. More shocking than that, though, is when the FBI comes calling .. with news that she is somehow related to a serial killer. The Tri-State Killer has been abducting pairs of women for forty years, leaving no clues behind – only bodies. Wanting to connect with her 'real' family, she finds a great uncle and his wife. They are the nicest people ...surely he is not a killer .. or is he? There are other male members of the family .. again .. are they suspect? guilty? Do they know more than what they are telling? Liz is determined to identify the killer and save his latest 2 victims before killing them. THE FAMILY TREE has a peculiar plot and unique story line. Told in part by prior victims, the reader is given a peek at how he manages to abduct two women at the same time and what they go through under his 'care'. Why does he wait 2 years before killing current victims and taking 2 new ones. There's plenty of action, lots of suspense, and a few twists and turns that lead to a highly unexpected conclusion. The characters are finely drawn. A page-turner for sure! Many thanks to the author / Avon Books UK / Harper 360 UK / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

The book lacked any real suspense or thrill. It had a really good premise but a long, drawn out story that just wasn't interesting. Sorry.

Imagine growing up, living through childhood, teens, twenties and then all of a sudden finding out you are adopted. Well, this is what happens to Liz when her cousin Andie buys her a DNA ancestry test kit for a bit of fun! After finding out her parents are not in fact her biological parents she starts her search, soon finding out that her mother was in prison for a drug related crime. She registers her DNA details with the police database in the hope of finding out more about her mother, only to have the FBI contact her saying they have matched her DNA to the Tri-State serial killer who has been abducting and murdering pairs of women for 40 years! This had me page turning from the first few pages. It is full on, chilling and very dark at times, which just added to the need for me to keep on reading. I read this in a day as I just couldn’t put it down. It is written in chapters from the point of view of Liz, then in the next chapter we discover more about the abducted women. It then rotates in chapters like this which was brilliant. The chapters about each pair of abducted women reveals more each time to what the killer actually does with the women and what he makes them do whilst in captivity. The descriptive writing was fabulous and sometimes quite graphic. I could picture the events as if I was actually there. This would make a perfect movie! I found myself shouting at Andie in my head several times, saying “No, don’t do it”. You will have to read it to find out why. If you are a psychological thriller fan I am pretty sure you will enjoy this. I can’t fault it at all and is in my top 10 reads of the year for sure. As for the ending.............brilliant! Thank you to netgalley, the publishers and the authors for an arc.