The Broken Ones
Carla Kovach
Detective Gina Harte #8
Cover and Synopsis
The Broken Ones Cover & Blurb
It was the perfect night out. Until it became her last.
Amber applies a dash of red lipstick and checks herself out in the mirror before heading out on a date. ‘Don’t wait up!’ she calls to her housemates as she leaves. But Amber never returns home that night. Amber Slater is never seen again.
The last person to see Amber was her housemate. He remembers everything she was wearing that night. He watched her leave. He listened to every word of her phone conversation with her friend before she left. He knows more about Amber’s movements than anyone.
At university, she is well-liked by her fellow students and teachers. Her tutor’s voice shakes when he is questioned by the police. Some say he and Amber were very close. Too close. Some say his wife had just found out about their relationship.
The manager at the restaurant where Amber was supposed to eat that night says she didn’t show up. Yet the chef at the restaurant is overly chatty about her. He wasn’t working that night. He wasn’t answering his phone. Nobody knows where he was when Amber went missing.
Rumours begin to circulate about Amber, it seems that everyone has a story to tell. But when the young girl’s lifeless body is found in a local park, with her blue lips glued shut, the gossip suddenly goes quiet. As the police trace the last few hours of Amber’s life, it seems that the girl simply vanished on her way to catch her bus. And when another woman goes missing in the dead of night, it’s a race against time to find her before she too is silenced forever.
Book Information
The Broken Ones
Published March 2021 by Bookouture.
Genre : Thriller/Mystery
Pages : 359 pages, Kindle Edition
Review
The Broken Ones by Carla Kovach
Alright, we are getting into The Broken Ones right off reading Their Silent Graves. I skimmed the synopsis. I know that our victim Amber has gone missing and she will eventually show up dead. But have no fear, Gina’s on the case. Here’s hoping she is back to her old badass self and thoughts of Terry are behind her. I know it’s a struggle letting go of the past, and Gina’s past is heartbreaking, but I’m over Terry being in every nook and cranny of the series. Gina was finally moving on with her life and working on her relationships with her friends and family. The girl deserves some peace and happiness.
There is definitely some spoilers in my chaotic thoughts as I attempted to figure out the who and why of the crime. Skip down to My Final Thoughts to avoid them.
- Loving it ! What a prologue. Mother. Death. Give me all the creepy things.
- Amber didn’t address our killer. Tricky fucker knows her name though.
- I love Detective Wyre.
- The pace so far is swift af.
- Pretty sure our killer is going to set his sights on Wyre.
- Oh you are far from in control Mr. Killer Man.
- Terry. Terry. Terry. Ffs.
- Oh Nanna, Maddie is gonna be dead by dinner tomorrow.
- Okay, maybe not dinner tomorrow. But it’s coming.
- Mr. Collins is a creep but I don’t think he’s our killer. (30%)
- Are hedgehogs a common animal to find under cars in the UK?
- I thought for sure our killer had a record. Perhaps it’s sealed.
- Oh hello Amber’s neighbor, are you Maddie’s Tyrone? I mean, I highly doubt you are our killer anyways.
- The superglue thing has me baffled and nothing from the killer chapters has given me an answer.
- Briggs! I didn’t think of him as the dating app type.
- My concern here is for Nanna. Poor Nanna. I mean, Maddie too. But poor Nanna. (44%)
- He’s definitely going after Wyre now.
- Catch the bastard for Nanna !
- I really thought it was Wyre. (53%)
- Of all Gina’s current suspects, my money’s on ‘the guy who smells like pizza’ but his backstory doesn’t match up quite right.
- Amber’s dad is a fucking creepy weirdo. No wonder he’s burning shit in his garage. (59%)
- Honestly, no wonder the girl had a burner phone.
- Tyrone is looking more and more suspicious by the page. Still not convinced it’s him. (73%)
- What is Tyrone and Alice playing at?
- The answer is in the app. (79%)
- It doesn’t fit because it wasn’t him. (83%)
- Shit, he’s on to you.
- You don’t know how right you are Gina. It’s not looking good for your colleague and you are still wound up in a love affair.
- What did you see through the window Tyrone you cagey fuck?
- Oh well, that I was not expecting.
The Broken ONes by Carla Kovach Review
Minor Spoilers
I enjoyed The Broken Ones more than the last installment of the DI Gina Harte series. Our killer has abducted Amber in hopes of replacing his long-dead sister. Obviously, it doesn’t work and Amber finds herself dead. Enter Gina and her team. Gina’s team begins working around the clock to uncover who killed Amber. Meanwhile, our murderer is out stalking his next replacement sister.
In The Broken Ones, we get multiple POVs. Gina’s pov chapters are filled with “It’s the husband” vibes. Which was cool, but because of the multi-pov, we the reader knew better. While we had no idea who our murderer was, it was clear it wasn’t anyone Gina had set her sights on. Especially after a second attack and then again when the third and final victim goes missing. However, the pace was quick and Gina’s suspects were sketch af.
Gina had a hard time letting go of the suspects she accumulated through her investigation into Amber’s death. So although I had a hard time getting into some of the investigation, I still wanted to get to the bottom of what Gina’s suspects were hiding. The closer we got to the ending, the tenser the story got. A colleague of Gina’s life was on the line and there were zero good leads.
In the end, Gina and her team managed to crack the case. Kovach is clever in her writing. I was questioning if our murderer had come up at all in the investigation, and what, if any, connection he had to our victims. Gina finally found the thread though, and our investigation came to a close with a nice red bow on top.
Side Note : I learned that hedgehogs are commonplace in the UK. Well, at least as far as the Google machine is concerned. Here in Canada, they are pets, so I was a bit shocked and confused when our killer was all “Hey I think there’s a baby hedgehog under my car” in mid-January.
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