Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Release Date: August 18, 2020
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Suspense
Blood Victory,
by author Christopher Rice, is the third installment in the authors Burning
Girl series. In this installment, Charlotte Rowe goes after Cyrus Mattingly
and those like him who pick up women who are never heard from again. You can
call it human trafficking if you like since the chosen women are taken long
distances to a secret place where Mother has set up shop. Charlotte's plan is
to lure Cyrus to targeting her by pretending to be someone else, and then
hopefully he can lead Charlotte and her team, which includes Cole Graydon, the
CEO of Graydon Pharmaceuticals, Noah Turlington, who returns to the series, Luke & Bailey Prescott, to
Cyrus' base of operation.
I should probably summarize why you should be reading
this series. In the beginning, Charlotte Rowe aka Trina Pierce, spent the first
7 years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew—a pair of
serial killers named Abigail and Daniel Banning who murdered her mother and
tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had
ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her
tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from
her ghoulish past and fled to Arizona where she met Dylan aka Noah. Noah tricked her into taking what she believed was a
new drug to calm her anxieties.
Noah injected her with a substance called
Zypraxen that gives Charlotte superhuman strength once she is triggered by
certain emotions. Charlotte became a person who has preternatural powers and
strengths that are wanted by certain nefarious consortium of powerful players.
Over the course of this series, she's got herself out of life and death
situations that didn't look good for our heroine thanks to Zypraxen. But she's not exactly free. Cole's hoping that
he can mass produce the drug so that others who fell to rapists, serial
killers, and human traffickers can fight back and take down their abusers. But Charlotte is the only one who has survived. Charlotte
has never forgiven Noah for what he did to her.
She did agree to work with Cole
hunting down mass murderers, rapists, and killers who have avoided justice.
Thankfully, Charlotte found Luke, a Deputy Sheriff in their hometown, who has
had his own nightmares since reuniting with Charlotte including being kidnapped
thanks to Cole's security failures. Bailey is Luke's brother. Bailey sees a
world without walls. He's willing to go wherever he desires which makes him a
good person to have around when Charlotte needs back-up. The bad part is that Cole's consortium really would like to see Charlotte
in a lab, not running around freely acting as though she's a superhero.
This
causes all sorts of consternation with Cole because he wants Charlotte to
remain free doing what she's doing. I think that this book is tied down unnecessarily by the ongoing
tension between Cole and Noah who were once lovers. I think that the addition
of Mother to this story gives the story that dark quality that the writer has
added to this story from the beginning. There is another character who is featured in this story.
Holly is another woman who became a target of Mother’s operation to shut up
strong willed women. Holly’s story ends with her making a choice of what to do
with her life now that Charley saved her from certain death.
Charley has her own demons that chase her. She still
remembers finding her mother’s last words on the place where she was kept.
She's not indestructible. She's still human no matter how much others want her
to believe otherwise. Her trials in the first part of this book are dark and
twisted and it really allows you to see that Charley's past still weighs
heavily on what she does now. She still remembers her own fathers’ betrayal at
trying to make an easy buck of her horrible story. But, with Luke alongside,
she has found a bit of light that hopefully won't be extinguished any time soon.
Those like Cyrus
and his brothers are not fictional characters in the real world. Human and sex trafficking is
real and is now being addressed by US Marshal's and other agencies as they
attempt to bring missing children home. They've had remarkable success in several states recently. An estimated 1.2 million kids are
affected by trafficking every single year. 2 million children are subjected to
prostitution in the global commercial sex trade. If you know of anyone who might be missing or involved, please contact the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST(1-800-843-5678).
