Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I continue with Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan series. In book five, Grave Secrets, we are taken with Temperance to Guatemala, where she works with local police to try and catch a killer who is taking the lives of young girls. When the case may have a connection in Canada, Temperance’s fling makes his way over to work with her on the case.
Main Characters:
- Temperance Brennan: Forensic anthropologist who is offering her services in Guatemala after it was requested to help them identify bodies, while there her original excursion takes a turn and she is brought onto something new that may have a connection back home, racing against the clock in the hopes that she catches the killer before he takes another young life but is out of her element in a new country
- Andrew Ryan: Detective in Montreal where Temperance works and sometimes helps with cases, the two have had this little fling for like the last three books so while he comes to Guatemala to help with the case it also seems it could be to be with Temperance
- Investigator Bartolomé Galiano: Works in the special crimes unit and brings Temperance on to the case of four young women going missing and now having been found in a freighting measure worry for a new missing woman who happens to be the Canadian ambassador’s daughter
My Review
If you have read my other reviews on the Temperance Brennan series by Kathy Reichs, you will know I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the series. Diving into book five Grave Secrets I am finding that this is still very much a true issue with me and this series. Don’t get me wrong when it comes down to it there are more strengths to the Temperance Brennan series than there are downfalls. However, the downfalls thus far have in my perspective been consistent book after book and it’s just a bit hard to get around once you see this off-pattern continuing in the books. In getting into Grave Secrets and seeing that we were jumping from the USA and Canada setting I was pumped. One of the things I’ve been critical about in the past is how in almost all of the books somehow a case that Temperance either has in North Carolina or Montreal where she works somehow somehow manages to just connect to the other place. This is just not possible and annoying when personally I really enjoy the realistic aspects of the books (lab, in the field, and police, procedural work etc.…) and this always just takes away from it because it’s just so outlandish. So, getting into Grave Secrets I thought that maybe some of the things I’ve been critical about just wouldn’t be possible in this one. I have to say, and I genuinely do not say this as an insult at all, that Kathy has a skill for making weird connections in her books that in reality manage to come together at the end. I don’t know she did it but she managed to bring Guatemala and Canada together in this one, so we have yet to have this pattern continue thus far.
When it comes to the mystery in the fifth Temperance Brennan novel it’s an interesting one. Initially, it seems that Temperance is in Guatemala doing work that lacks a lot of danger and is at a much slower pace than what she’s been up to in North America. Things take a turn when the team she is with gets attacked, seemingly because they have started to uncover something they shouldn’t have. Things from this point ramp up and Temperance is brought into a situation in which young women are going missing similarly, and now the Canadian Ambassador’s daughter may be one of the missing people. Detective Andrew Ryan makes his way to Temperance from Canada to represent and maybe be there for a little emotional support. The two battle against being in a new country with different laws, politics, and overall way of life and culture.
I am not sure what it was about Grave Secrets but it was a bit of a bore for me. I just couldn’t get hooked on the pace of the book or the mystery. I landed on rating the book a 6/10 rating. I will say that while I enjoyed the plot of the mystery there was just something different about the level of suspense in this book that just made it not as gripping as some of the others in the series. It may have been the setting and that given it was a different place than where she was from it called for a slower pace but also given the plot – missing girl/ dead girls – you would think that the pace could have been a touch faster. Now I can openly admit this may have been because I struggled to get hooked on the mystery in this book but I also found myself being a little confused here and there. For example, there’s a part where Temperance goes to Canada to search for the missing girl and I was just extremely confused about how this girl would have gotten back to Canada and if this was really connected to all the other dead girls because initially I wasn’t really getting the sense it was. It does all come together but I was just left a bit confused initially because I was just getting lost with all the characters and what exactly the hell was going on.
Despite all my negativity, I did find different parts of the book to be really enjoyable especially when Temperance was in the field of the lab. I just didn’t enjoy the parts where she was doing things that didn’t really fit her job description. I mean I guess she does do that a lot but not generally to this degree. While the way Ryan shows up in the story is a bit far-fetched I did enjoy having him there because he tends to be a good counter character to Temperance who balances some of her crazy things out.
Have you read Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs before? What did you think? Or if you’ve checked out other books in the series how did you find them?
I hope you enjoyed this review and thank you for checking it out! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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