The 7 She Saw

Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thrillers #1

by Elle Gray

Every 7 years Briar Glen is plagued with 7 sudden and unexplained gruesome murders.
Many believe that the entire town is cursed and shrouded in evil.
But the truth is far worse than Blake Wilder or the innocent townspeople could ever imagine…

Fourteen years ago, young Blake Wilder came home from school to find her parents brutally murdered.
As the devastated Blake frantically searched her house for her baby sister. She soon realized the young girl was missing, taken from her room.
At the age of 22, Blake joined the FBI in hopes of one day discovering the truth behind the mysteries of her own past. Through the years at the bureau, she has solved many disturbing cases.

When she is called to the small affluent town of Briar Glen, she soon finds that the idyllic seaside town is far from what it appears.
Three young women are found brutally murdered, and their bodies dumped in odd location.
Agent Wilder finds conflicting clues and similar patterns of killing from 7 years ago.
As more secrets are uncovered, Blake realizes that there is a malevolent darkness that potentially underlies everything in this place.

In Briar Glen, the shocking truth of the town will forever haunt you.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Suspense, Mystery Thriller, Fiction, Audiobook

276 pages, Paperback

First published December 26, 2020

About the author

Elle Gray lives in a small town with her 2 cats, and her handsome husky.
As a girl, she was obsessed with crime novels and thrillers.

Today, she loves writing and creating thrilling novels with courageous, strong heroes/heroines and dangerous psychopaths. She invites you to join her exciting world of detectives and FBI agents that take down killers and kick butt.

Reviews

[Lisa Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Bad For A "Small Town" FBI Read

You know what really irked me about this book? The typos? No, there were just a few. Has to be the grammar then, right? No, that wasn't too bad either, save for the usual dangling participles. How about the first person narrative? Nope, that was actually okay, too.

I just couldn't suspend belief over this: the author chooses to set her novel in the fictional "small", "quaint", seaside beach town of Briar Glen, Washington, close to the Oregon border that has a population of - wait for it - 235,000 denizens. That's right, for this author, a seaside beach town that consists of 235,000 is "small". 235,000 is not " small". I thought perhaps she meant to mean the total population of the county, or the county and its neighboring county, but no, she means a seaside population of 235,000. I don't think so.

Briar Glen also seems to have a murder problem that no one - no one! - seems have figured out but our FBI Agent Blake. One would think, at least I did, that a "town" with a "current population of two hundred thirty five thousand people" with a "murder rate of about eighteen per hundred thousand" that has "exceeded the state and national average for a decade and a half" would have surely - surely! - thrown up some red flags on someone's data reports long before now. But no, as we are reminded again: Briar Glen "... isn't a big major metro area, nor is it central to a lot of interstate commerce. This is a sleepy little beach town hours away from everything else." Pffft.

What's even odder, everyone sans our female protagonist and her side kick, are nothing more than simple rubes that don't even know their town has a problem. Sure, they have an ME and a morgue; a Sheriff's Department, one hundred staff strong, but no detectives, no in-house lab work, insufficient training, a sheriff that wears a "Smokey the Bear" hat instead of a Smokey bear hat; and no local police department. If I didn't know better, it sounds as if the sheriff spends more time with his son Opie fishing than working on piecing together criminal cases.

You may enjoy. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly great. Oh, and there is a twist (or hook, depending on your point of view) that should launch us eagerly into reading the next book in the series in the last chapter that had me rolling my eyes - you'll know it when you read it, or maybe not. For me, I have to read the next book so I can find out how much more gullible our heroine becomes.

[Marguerite (M)]

DNF somewhere

This reads more as a teen mystery than anything else. Blake, the heroine, keeps talking about everyone's looks and about her lack of confidence about every other page, yet judging others when she stands on the higher ground.
And can we also please talk about the small town of 250,000 residents?

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wondering why the author thinks a town with 235K people is “small”.

Also wondering why an FBI agent would not look into a potential suitor’s background, allow him (a complete stranger) to pick her up at her apartment, and leave him alone with her laptop open and unsecured. Stupid!

Was a little annoying to see THE END written at the close of the book, like a kid’s book. 🙄

Glad that I read this through Amazon Prime for free, I would be mad if I wasted my money on it since I already wasted my time.

[Stace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't get into the book

It just drags on. I tried multiple times to get into the book. I tried skimming and skipping ahead. I just couldn't do it. I was really looking forward to reading this. It is like listening to a drunk person telling a short story but makes into a long story. Way too much detail in the wrong part of the story.

[Elise · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t often criticize writing since I’m not an author and the fact that this person got some published is an achievement in itself, but with that being said, I have to say this was one of the most poorly written books I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. From typos and grammatical errors to the ridiculous dialogue and character development, I am pretty sure a high school student could have written a better novel. This read like more of an outline than an actual novel and I am shocked it got such great reviews. I won’t be reading anything else by this author. Terrible.

[Bradford Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK but…..

The storyline was written in first person narrative. While that is fine, the first 30 pages contained too much introspection. There were also some typos and grammatical errors which leads me to think the proofreading, if any, was hastily done. And the ending left the reader hanging in the air.

[Alisonbookreviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about fbi agent Blake.
Travelling to Briar Glen Blake is trying to find out why low income people are getting killed.
She tries to recruit the Sheriff to help her.
After meeting the coroner she thinks something is linked between the Sheriff, the coroner and the killings.
She also believes there is some kind of cult that is sacrificing their victims.
Good start to this fbi series. First time reading Elle Gray.

[Mackey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

This was a good "escape" book, meaning that I didn't want to have to think too hard about the plot and just escape for a few hours. For that purpose, it was good. While it appears that nearly every reviewer before has mentioned the spelling/grammar errors, I have to admit that I noticed them but brushed them off knowing that this was an indie read. I get thoroughly pissed when an editor and publishing house lets those pass through but when it's an indie read, it is more customary to contact the author and tell them than to complain about them in the review

My primary complaint about the book was Astra, the friend. I really do despise women like her who cannot get their brains out of their crotch for two seconds. I really hoped that she would die at the end of this book. Oh well, there's hope for the next one.

[Debbie DiFiore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved this

The ending was so good. I can't wait to read the next book! The whole story was great with the scary town cult killing people for justice. Seriously I was totally surprised at the leader. I keep thinking the number of people that were in the cult didn't add up in the end. I will have to read to verify. Loved Blake and loved ExtrA. Can't wait for the next one.

[Liza Parfait · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF the over explaining really got boring. She’s explaining the sheriff of the “small town” how solving crimes isn’t like tv?! EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. Especially the sheriff.

[The Humble Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

My honest review is 4.5 stars. I can't make it a 4.5 on goodreads though. Half a Star off because although the book was terrific, it really was!!!!! It just seemed a little rushed after Astra was shot.
The book was fabulous 👌 its just after the shooting, the Author was hogtied and couldn't figure what to do next so Elle Gray thought the only way to stitch it all up was to kinda rush it. I think the book needed to be longer. I've read Nora Roberts and her books are almost 500 pages. Their super long but so good. I think this book needed an extra 100 to draw out the storyline so it wasn't rushed.

I think the storyline was fabulous 👌 the characters are awesome. I don't have any complaints other than it felt too rushed after Astra was injured.

I do however have questions...1) was the guy playing doctor the one watching Blake? I'm assuming thats a yes...
2) did deputy summers fail the psych exam at Quantico? We never the got answer
3) did Blake ever actually apologize to sophie? She apologized to the Sheriff but...

Also I have to add that I live in a small town of 20k, we only have 100 sheriff's in our whole state, but...we even as a small town have a detective department an hour away. We have a state sheriff office that's an hour away and a county sheriff office that's 20mins away. We have detectives, we have k9s, we have a helicopter unit. Soooo why does this town not have a detective department???? And it has a pop of 250k? 250k is NOT a small town lol. 250k is a city. A city that size would have everything. I think Elle Gray needed to do some more research..or think about changing some things. That doesn't add up.

[J B · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5. My supervisor at work lent me this book and I had seen another lady read this series too. I normally do not read book series or mysteries. In the beginning there were great chunks of prose that was numbingly repetitive and poor which made me stop reading and let it wash over me and often I remarked on these poor passages. But I enjoyed the story. The thing about about being a book-enjoyer is that you can have overall bad prose and still enjoy what you've read. Some of the passages had good writing in it but not that often. I thought the story was fine. (I'm being generous I think because I know my quota for enjoying things is higher than other people. I feel like I wouldn't recommend this book unless they had a certain itch for story elements this one contains). I didn't know who was responsible for the crimes Blake was investigating and I wanted to know how it would all resolve. I'm going to continue this series since it's basically a part of the work culture of my job... It's fun to read for the social aspect of it. Something I feel like I never really engaged myself with before. Apparently there are better books coming up in this series.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book could have been good -- the plot was fine. But the writing was so verbose, like the author had to explain the reasoning behind every word. So it went way too slow. Larry and I listened to the audio book on the way to Indiana and couldn't wait to finish it. It's about a profiler for the FBI that sees higher than usual murder rates in a small town and goes to investigate. In helping the sheriff there they find two groups of crimes, one series every seven years with a symbolic nail added to the finger of the innocent girls killed, and then a series of criminals that weren't convicted in court so were killed for justice.

[Salmanghazi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite boring

Full of quite boring and Unnecessary details and discussions not relevent to the plot. A major portion has boring discussions and dialogues.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite typos this was a fairly competent thriller. I liked the main characters and will try the next book in this series.

[Holly Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blake Wilder

At first I wasn’t sure about this one but by chapter 2 I was hooked and the epilogue just goes to show going to have to keep reading to see what happens with family death 💕

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series is really addicting in the same way tv crime shows are. Other than the soap box the author occasionally gets on (usually just human rights stuff or sexism so I don’t think I ever disagreed—I just didn’t see the point in going on tangents about it multiple times), these are pretty good. They were published super fast which usually scares me but these are solid and the audiobooks are too. The narrator is great. It’s relaxing and there was no worrying about a surprise graphic sexual assault scene which I feel like is weirdly common in mystery/thrillers. They obviously talk about gory murder stuff but it’s not ever gritty or creepy. It’s light hearted and you just sit back and watch the puzzle being put together. Nothing too deep or dark, which is what I needed :-)



I will say, the main character definitely “isn’t like other girls” and even though she talks about women empowering each other and being confident, she still lowkey judges other women if they wear make up and like to dress up. She also mentions it very frequently that her best friend makes her feel invisible when they go out together bc of how pretty and outgoing she is. Really my only complaints are that and I wish the characters were a little more complex but honestly these are small complaints. I was entertained the whole time so I’m happy

[Leanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow… I can’t even tell you how many times I rolled my eyes when reading the first 30% of this book. The first issue I have is that 250,000 people is a midsized city that would have multiple police precincts in addition to a branch of the sheriff’s department and probably a branch of the state police as well. Each precinct would have their own crime scene techs and it wouldn’t fall on the shoulders of the medical examiner. Small towns in my estimation top out around 25,000 people… but what do I know? I’ve only lived in 3 different ones. 🙄

I’ll give this to the author however, what I did read was for the most part technically well written, I cannot suspend belief far enough to continue reading however. It could be a fantastic story, but I’ll leave that for others to determine.

[Kira · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this book was set in a small town right? But what bothered me was how literally everyone in the Sheriff’s department failed to notice the murders being covered up even if they were not the one being called at the scene.

I really did try to love this book seeing as how it had such a good average rating but it fell somewhere between meh and okay for me. Blake is just 22? And still she’s the one who single handedly notices the pattern and fixes a point of enquiry. Her sidekick Astra was good but I felt like it was way too much interference in someone’s life, even for “best friends”.

The plot twist at the end was the one interesting thing about this book and I may pick up the next one just to see what does Blake do if and when she finds out the truth!

[Ladyhawke · Rating 1 out of 5]

did I miss something??

Ok … I’m trying not to put any spoilers up… this book goes NOWHERE. It has plenty the author could have fleshed out… but no… It’s a major let down like someone else wrote the ending. The rest… well 50% is about Blake. A single episode of law and order has more mystery. The ending has me wondering who the heck would do something so stupid? Is there no explanation of why… no sufficient reason after all the build up… Maybe I missed some important paragraph? Then the epilogue…
I hate I lost a rainy afternoon to this book …
Time I’ll never get back

[Barbara Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely hooked

It has been forever since I have come across an author who can hold my attention, keep involved and want to do continue reading through everything they have in print. Elle Gray has hit that mark for me. If you are into police procedure/profiler genre then don't miss her series. Interesting, intriguing profiling puzzles that are easy to follow as well as a great mini escape from life.

[Emma K Curtis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring

I tried to stay with this book but found myself skipping pages after having to read through repetitive garbage about how the FBI are superior in training to local law enforcement. A cop is a cop with some barney fifes thrown in. The characters were unlikeable as well which is when I gave up. Not recommending

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this a it's-not-you-it's-me situation? Because I did not enjoy reading this. I slogged through it to see if it got better, but it never did. Blake came across to me as immature and yet also superior. And since it was 1st person, we were inside that immature brain constantly. She was either comparing herself to other women and finding herself wanting (for no particularly good reason), or she was the only one in the room doing her job! She kept saying she wasn't profiling, and then would immediately go on to set up a profile. And how is it that a very young FBI agent fresh out of Quantico knows so much more about law enforcement than seasoned police officers? I can understand that she was taught things in training, but most police go through training as well. I think this is a situation where the author wanted to set her up as a Mary Sue, but somehow self-effacing at the same time. It didn't work for me.

I also thought everything surrounding the cult was unnecessarily complicated. No spoilers, but how Blake figured it out with all those complications, was nothing short of a miracle.

And I have to agree with many of the reviewers. This small town has a population just shy of 250,000. The 2nd largest city in Michigan doesn't even have a population of 200,000! Do we think the author got the math wrong and meant to say 25,000? That would be more likely.

[Fatima Rezigui · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! I was going to give it 3 ⭐ but then that epilogue got my eyes wide open and my jaw to the floor!!

Blake Wilder is a super agent basically, good at martial arts, good shooter, good friend and super smart! I find her slightly annoying, granted, this is the first book of the series and we are just getting to know her. But still, she is self-conscious about her looks, especially when she is with her friend and partner Astra, whom i like very much! Anyway, so Blake lost her parents to terrible murder when she was young and her baby sister was taken at the same time, apparently she never stopped working their case and that is an interesting revelation at the end of the book!

About this crime! You have a cult of prominent people in a small town that commit murders like there is no tomorrow! I think that the motive was kind of dull! I mean, if it was just religious beliefs it would have been interesting!

Favourite scene is the last epilogue, the whole idea of that doctor and what he knows about Blake's family is going to be awesome!

[Lorie Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book and learning how Blake uses her profiler skills to solve the mystery! She put the jigsaw together, piece by piece. I hate puzzles bc I’m not good at them. I admire how Elle Gray pulls this story together with twists and turns. Looking forward to reading the next Blake Wilder book.

[Jjean · Rating 4 out of 5]

An FBI cozy, mystery thriller - written in first person with thoughts of profiling a serial killer to how to handle the small town sheriff - twist & turns - an easy read and interesting but the ending does leave you with a cliff hanger.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series is a spin-off from the Pax Arrington series, which I love! But the Blake Wilder series already promises to be better. Blake is a great character and I love how she thinks and puts her case together. Her friend Astra is a perfect compliment to Blake. Awesome, highly recommended read!

[Courtney White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took a VERY long time to get past the intro and into the main details. Hoping the next of the series isn't like that.

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

An amateurish thriller... too many cliches, immature characters, unbelievable plot. The writing style definitely needed some additional editing and revising.

[Kim Gamblin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good FBI crime story-it’s a series so I guess I’ll read the next one!