Dow Jones’s Reviews > The Butcher and the Wren > Status Update

Jeremy gets away in a really improbable way of setting up a body nearby as a staged suicide to pose as him only for him to slip away unseen & unheard. Only 1 shot fired by Will after an officer’s down? Nah. Officers apparently everywhere searching before & during shootings w/ no trace? Nah. How did I rate this 4 stars before? Not a bad 1st book, but obviously written for Morbid fans & herself if once in a lifetime.

Wren connects her old hemlock poisoning case of Jeremy’s mother to him, and his childhood friend, Philip Trudeau, confirms him being his best friend back in the day. Jeremy breaks into Wren’s house to steal her grandma’s ring, wrecks his own house in frustration, and sets the ring on the table in wait for the trap he’s set for Wren/Emily to return to where he tortured her 7 years prior.

Ohhh, Emily is Wren and it’s been 7 years. Now Jeremy has slipped up by being too hasty with a bar pickup who’s survived and rescued by hunters.

Very fast paced short chapters. Emily Maloney’s bracelet. Chapter timelines don’t match perfectly, but Emily was cut, captured, and buried alive. I thought the game was the night of the jazz fest to draw attention away from property & noise though. But buried w/ timers to alert her death were placed during jazz fest w/ decomposing (Katie?) body under the stage.

After the flyer matches Wren’s business card, it seems like a quick cut to rounding up the force and planning to recon the jazz festival. Jeremy’s started his first hunting game w/ lab partner Emily, Katie, & Matt as the players. Katie sucks, Matt gets killed, and Emily has to survive but wasted time trying to help Katie. Couple typos so far. A bit too many pop culture references, though serial killers are ok.

Wow, incredible ending of being in Jeremy Calvin Rose’s house. Creepy ending and I wonder who the other dead man was. Wren and him met face to face but he still got away due to his bulletproof vest. I imagined more cops around though. No helicopters? I thought he’d blow up the house with them inside or something. Great ending of walking toward the road through the swamp. I need more!

Jeremy screws up a recent kill and the woman, Tara, lives and there are witnesses from the bar. He creepily breaks into Wren’s house to steal her grandmother’s ring and I’m curious if they’ll catch him or if he’ll get away and it’ll lead into a sequel book.

Holy shit, I just got it that Jeremy’s chapters are all in the past. What a twist that Wren is really Emily and she survived his hunting game 7 years ago. Seems a bit too recent of something to fully get past, but that bracelet was a good touch. Phillip Trudeau was probably Jeremy’s childhood best friend. Sad they couldn’t save Emma at the cemetery. Really digging this second half now.

Wren has a nightmare about the killer after he left her business card at a kill site. She recognizes the name Phillip Trudeau but can’t recall where. The birthday tarot reading was good and I hope the lady recorded the rest to that CD after Wren walked out. The action is really ramping up nicely. I have a feeling Jeremy is related to Wren or especially her husband. The butcher’s field game has started too.

It’s in an interesting present tense style and a pattern of killer-to-medical examiner chapter sequence. I’m not a big fan of the short sentences and prefer Alaina’s longer descriptions which are really good. Enjoying it so far but am curious about Wren’s backstory being intro’d sometime since the butcher has his told early on. A lot of new vocab but feels like Morbid, of course. So far, so good.