The Vanishing Season: A Mystery (Ellery Hathaway, #1)

by Joanna Schaffhausen

A chilling tale of suspense for fans of Julia Heaberlin. Fourteen years ago, teenager Ellery Hathaway was victim number seventeen in the grisly murder spree of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. She was the only one who lived.

Now Coben is safely behind bars, and Ellery has a new identity in a sleepy town where bike theft makes the newspapers. But each July for the last three years, locals have been disappearing. Then Ellery receives strange messages hinting that the culprit knows exactly what happened to her all those years ago. When she tries to raise the alarm, no one will listen, and terrified she may be next, Ellery must turn to the one person who might believe her story...

• ISBN10: 1250126045
• ISBN13: 9781250126047
• Publish Date: 5 December 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 12 May 2021
• Imprint: Minotaur Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[chymerra]

When I saw the blurb for The Vanishing Season, I was intrigued. The victim of a serial killer becomes a cop who then sees a coincidence when people go missing each year around her birthday. The book had me at that. Forget that a famous profiler got involved, I wanted to read about how Ellery was dealing with the aftermath of her trauma. And the author more than delivered!!

The Vanishing Season takes place in the town of Woodbury, Massachusetts. Ellery Hathaway, the only living victim of a sadistic serial killer, is a police officer there. Over the past three years, Ellery has noticed that a person has gone missing on her birthday. Suspecting a serial killer, she tries to get the chief to investigate and is written off. With days left until another person disappears, Ellery reaches out to the FBI agent who rescued her. Reed Markham. Can he help Ellery find the killer before he/she strikes again?

The plotline for The Vanishing Season was lightning fast, and it kept up that pace throughout the book. There was no lag, which was surprising considering how fast this book went. The author was able to keep my focus on the book for the entire book. Put it this way; I picked this book up at 9 am and finished it at 11 am.

I loved how the author portrayed Ellery’s character. It was Ellery that drew me to the book. I wanted to know, “How could someone live after being tortured like she was?”. I got my answer back tenfold. She had severe PTSD and couldn’t form attachments. But she managed to live a normal (if you could call that normal) life. I did want to smack her mother upside the head at points in the book. Your kid was kidnapped, sexually assaulted over and over, and tortured, yet you didn’t get her into therapy? That was a massive WTF from me.

I liked Reed. He was a washed-up version of the person he was when he rescued Ellery. I liked that he acknowledged that. I wasn’t too sure what to make of his dropping everything to help Ellery when she called. But I understood why he did it. He wanted to see how she turned out. He also understood the implications of the people missing on her birthday, and he believed her when she told him what was going on. The small sub storyline with his family did catch my interest.

The main storyline was well written. The author did a fantastic job of keeping how the killer was and why he/she was doing it under wraps. She had me thinking that it was several different people until the big reveal. I was surprised at who it was. I was also shocked at the twist in the plotline. I was not expecting it to go the way it did or what happened.

The end of The Vanishing Season wrapped up beautifully. There was enough left where I did wonder what the next book will be about. I can’t wait to read it!!

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog Nonstop Reader.

The Vanishing Season is the first book in a new mystery/thriller series by Joanna Schaffhausen. Originally published in 2017, this reformat and re-release from Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint it's 274 pages and available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats.

This is a well written and atmospheric thriller with a serial killer theme and a main protagonist who is an adult survivor of an abduction as a teenager. The plotting is tense and controlled and ramps up through the book to a satisfying (and admittedly somewhat surprising) denouement. The characters are clearly drawn, distinct, and believable. The dialogue is intelligent and never clunky.

I read this book alone in my house during a snow/hailstorm in the middle of the night and scared the pants off myself. It really is well written and parts are very creepy. The language is rough (R-rated), and there are potentially traumatic themes (obviously), abduction, body horror, murder, etc. I would recommend this series to fans of the gritty procedural serial killer genre. The author has a strong voice and a surprisingly sure command of plotting and tension elements in her writing for a debut novel. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

[readingwithwrin]

This was a purely cover read for me.

Also, it seemed like everyone else was reading/taking pictures of this one on bookstagram.
Sadly for me, this book fell flat. I had so much anxiety while reading it, and while it might have been from it being finals week/midterms, I feel like it was more likely due to the fact that this book kept throwing things at us before we got answers. I was able to figure it out before the end of the book sadly and it was just kind of meh to me. It wasn't satisfying at all. I'm also a person who needs to like the characters, and by the end, I didn't like any of them if we're being honest.
I did like how we had flashbacks to what had happened in the past, and how things were connecting in the detective's minds. If I could have just had the first half of the book, I would have liked this story more, some how in the last half I went from enjoying the book to just finding it not so great. I didn't hate this one, but I didn't like it or love it.

Did anyone else feel this way about this book?

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