Book Review Combo – “Heartsick/Sweetheart”

1st book – good. 2nd book – DeflateGate.

I thought author Chelsea Cain had a great premise with her first novel “Heartsick” – a detective (Archie) is kidnapped and tortured by an unrealistically beautiful serial killer (Gretchen) posing as a psychologist. She lets him live (not a spoiler alert because the novel starts two years after this event, and the circumstances are revealed in flashbacks). In the first novel we find Archie divorced, depressed, addicted to pain killers and weirdly obsessed with Gretchen. She’s no Hannibal Lecter – her beauty is Barbie-esque and her psychopathy is a little flat – but she’s intriguing as a foil to Archie’s more angsty, three-dimensional character. I was fascinated by the warped Stockholm Syndrome that had (seemingly) developed between Archie and Gretchen during his torture sessions. However – and spoiler alert – in the second novel “Sweetheart,” that all changes.

Archie’s creepy obsession/attraction is revealed not to have stemmed from him spending time as Gretchen’s victim, but was in fact already present because they’d had an affair BEFORE she decided to mutilate him. Alas, there was no Stockholm Syndrome, no warped, unnatural infatuation to explore. After the mystery surrounding the main characters’ chemistry and connection fizzled, and the ending was too neatly tied up in a series of events that didn’t seem true to the story, I decided not to keep reading this series (there are at least six books, possibly a seventh). I’m very disappointed; the first book was a lot of fun, and showed great promise.