Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)

by J D Robb

[Berls]

It continues to blow my mind how this can be book 52 - FIFTY TWO - of the series and I can still love every minute. This one is definitely one of my favorites and really got to me, I was choked up more than a few times.

As always, the characters are what make this series. And at 52 books, I feel like I know them. I can talk to you about every one of them as if they were my best friends, because JD Robb has made them so real. A few personal advances happening in this book, for Mavis, Leonardo, Peabody, and McNab. But it wasn't the personal life stuff that made this book, it was the way the ENTIRE crew - name someone that has been important in the series, and I swear they were part of it - rallied together to take down these MFers.

I think having such a solid crew of just really fantastic, GOOD cops and detectives who stand for victims and take it so personal is part of what makes this series special - it definitely adds to me emotional response. The detective / police-procedural work of this book really shines. But I got especially emotional because:
1 - they're taking out a cult in this book. As someone who grew up in a cult - no quite as severe as this one, but with lots of familiar ideas and similar living situations - it hit really close to home; and
2- a lot of the victims are mothers with young kids who they are desperately trying to protect and save. With Dante being almost 2, that put me in their headspace so easily. And with my father still in the cult, I sometimes have anxiety/fear about him somehow getting Dante and exposing him to that world. So it just really hit me super hard, that fear for your child.

I think all that hit me even more because it was written so damn well. I really hated to put this book down in the last 50% and I'm so glad that the Finish What You Started Readathon got me to finally pick this up.

As always, I listened and have grown to love Susan Eriksen's narration. For me, she is the voice of all those characters I've come to love and I'm thrilled she's stuck around for all 52 books!