i appreciated the end part with the history behind the story. It was an entertaining read and I really liked the characters and story.

Not dead by Anita Dickason.
A small-town Texas cop who is haunted by his past.
A reporter who risks it all, even her life.
A kidnapping that crosses into an unearthly realm.
A brilliant read. The cover is what drew me to this book. I loved the story and some of the characters. Ashley and Chad were my favourite characters. I loved how he knew what she was like. I also loved the paranormal side. Spooky and eerie. 5*. Highly recommended.

Okay, so like the last book I reviewed, I found I didn't enjoy the style of writing in this one. It's a little more difficult to explain though, so I'll just put it down to personal taste.
Never judge a book by its cover... The cover drew me in, however, I didn't really look into what the story was about. I kinda had it in my head that it would be about a spooky doll that got up to no good. But it wasn't.
While the doll was mentioned throughout, it wasn't the main focus point.
I didn't really enjoy this one. Likeable but not enjoyable.
Thank you #NetGalley for allowing me to review this.

I liked it. Not Dead was a quick read, and had quite a bit of suspense. I liked the supernatural twist. Although the doll on the cover makes one think this is a horror novel, it is not. I am hoping there are more in a series. Chad and Ashley make a good team.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

The cover art caught my eye immediately. It had an .. "annabelle" vibe. .
The story is about the abduction of a four year old. It was an unique storyline for sure.
The characters were interesting. It was a thrilling book.

Likes: the author before beginning the book writes out the list of characters so it's easier for the reader to remember who's who, I love YA mystery books and the description of the book before reading it sounded really interesting with the plot. Dislikes: the cover page of the book didn't really grab my attention. The description of the book did and I believe with a better-looking cover the book would grab more readers who simply go off covers of books when choosing, hard to follow because the author jumps around a lot with the different characters and their POV, the author gives no indication of jumping from one scene to another in the middle of the chapter and it doesn't seem to blend all together smoothly, the setting of the story within each scene isn't really given and it's hard to imagine what's going on besides the dialogue between characters. New Police Chief Chad Bishop has just moved to a small town in Central Texas. During one of the first few days of his new job, he gets an incoming alert that a four-year-old is missing. Soon after receiving the call within a town this small it becomes a huge media frenzy. The police department with only 4 officers total has never had a missing child happen here before, upon arriving at the scene they are baffled and have no idea how to proceed with investigating. The police chief notices that the gate in the back was left open that seemed to be irrelevant to the other officers and mentions it to the mother who insists that she had closed it and someone must have opened it. He knew right away that the child had been abducted. While investigating back at the station the missing girl Mandys' aunt has just moved back into town after becoming a widow, getting a new job as a journalist at The Sun, and wanting to be closer to her sister and her family. With the background knowledge of investigations, she believes that the officers and Chief Bishop aren't doing all that they should be doing and demands answers.

Not Dead by Anita Dickason – 4 Stars
Publisher: Mystic Circle Books
ISBN: 9780996838597

Not Dead is a paranormal crime thriller with a lot of romance. Much of it is a police procedural to find an abducted four-year-old little girl who has a passion for dolls.
It is obvious that the sheriff and editor of the local newspaper in a small Texas town will become romantically involved as soon as they are introduced. Much of the plot centers upon their often-adversarial relationship.

There are occasional hints of paranormal activity throughout, but the spooky stuff isn’t revealed until the final 20% of the story.

Overall it was nice and a little eerie. By nice I mean there wasn’t any graphic violence, steamy sex or nasty language. It didn’t keep me up all night but the characters and plot kept me reading to find out if Mandy got home safely and how the dolls were involved in the investigation.

Reviewer: Nancy

This is a great read. It combines a paranormal like vibe with an air of mystery to it. An eerie fog and a missing child investigation grabbed me from the start. I could not put the book down. What a page turner. I loved it.

Well written fiction at it's best. Chad, Ashley and Susan are thrown into an Amazingly odd encounter with a dirty and tattered doll. Little girls are been kidnapped and sold. Susan is playing in her back yard when a strange man entices her to he backyard gate with a doll. He then drugs her and kidnaps her.
Chad is the police officer investigating the case. Ashley is Susan's aunt and also a reporter for the local paper.
The key to finding Susan is listening. If Chad will listen, he may gain the clues to help him rescue Susan. Ashley with her doggedness in finding a story but also finding her niece finds additional information. Information that uncovers a kidnapping ring of little girls.
Thankfully with the help of strange and mysterious dolls, Susan may be found.
Riveting, shocking, Amazing!!

Many Thanks to Net Galley, IBPA and Anita Dickason for a chance to review this book.

The cover of the book made me expect something like 'Annabelle', even though the doll 'Betsy' in this book is more ragged-looking. NOT DEAD was a big surprise for me. I didn't expect it to be such a good thriller so much that I had a hard time putting it down.

Meridian is a small town in Texas from where 4 yr old Mandy has been kidnapped. The police chief Chad has moved over from Atlanta Police and the reasons for the change are not something he wants to disclose to anyone. Mandy's aunt Ashley who is also the new investigative reporter in town has also moved recently after the death of her fiancee. Chad and Ashley hit all the wrong notes at their first meeting even though both feel a spark of attraction. However they soon join forces to find the reasons behind Mandy's disappearance. With Ashley's help, Chad realizes there has been a series of kidnappings in the area and painstakingly goes over every single detail connected with the doll that has been left behind at the spot where Mandy was last seen playing The doll Betsy becomes the crucial piece of evidence that leads to the criminals behind the kidnapping.

The paranormal element in the story creates the necessary chills making it one superb thriller in this category. It is an added plus that the author is a retired Dallas police officer, so there's an authentic feel to the plot. The only thing I wish is that I had got to this book a couple of months back so that I could have visited this small town in Texas.

I’m torn on this one. While it’s not terrible, it’s also not great. It’s just one of those books that’s ok, but nothing spectacular.

On the plus side, the story isn’t bad. It’s not too complex, an abducted child and the ensuing investigation, with a hint of the supernatural and a little too much lusty romance talk, but not too bad. You have a police chief with a traumatic past linked with another child abduction and the reporter aunt of the missing girl, who is grieving the loss of her fiancé. As mentioned, there’s some romance, but it’s remarkably chaste and a tad cheesy. Mostly the language used, made me cringe a little, and I prefer a slightly more sophisticated romance plot. The likes of Karen Rose and Mary Burton do that type of book well, the lovey dovey stuff is usually offset with some violence and psychological twists and turns. Here, there just wasn’t that depth. It almost felt like a teenage girl’s/middle aged woman dream fairy tale, where a man falls irrevocably in love with a woman in a couple of days (despite the antagonistic start, natch) and starts to plan their future children. It’s very much an unrealistic and naive set up. I liked the chief, Chad (awful name, it’s not one we see often in the UK and it’s roundly mocked, so we started slightly on the back foot), well enough. He wasn’t spectacular, I didn’t crave the knowledge of his background, he was just a solid law enforcement stereotype character. Dedicated and honest, hard working and dogged, with a soft sensitive side which just needed the right woman to unleash it. Ashley, the reporter aunt, started off obnoxious and intensely unpleasant, but she did soften and helped a lot with the leads in the case - much more than any of the law enforcement officers, that’s for sure, and became more likeable and interesting. I didn’t like how she suddenly decided that she loved Chad MORE than her late fiancé. Why not just allow her to find happiness without devaluing her previous relationship? It was rather immature. The other characters aren’t particularly developed, they’re just there to move the plot forward in predictable ways.

Now, to the less great stuff. The writing isn’t the best. A little too much unnecessary detail, like Ashley’s choice of breakfast in one paragraph. Completely unnecessary and didn’t advance the plot at all, nor did it enhance our knowledge of who she was. I prefer a ‘show not tell’ method and there were times when it slipped into ‘tell not show’, which isn’t ideal. Also, there were sloppy plot holes. For example, at one point someone is calling Ashley about the reward money she’s offering. She needs to find out the procedure for getting cash so the caller says he’ll phone back. Now, both Ashley and the chief know that this caller knows more about the abduction that what he’s volunteered so far. He’s a suspect. Yet Chad only mentions putting a trace on the phone AFTER the second call. Why!?!? You were aware he was calling back, in the second call he arranges the money drop so there’s no reason to believe he’ll call again, but you KNEW he’d be calling the second time and had over an hour to get a trace set up. Sloppy and obvious.

Now, the supernatural element. I’m a big fantasy fan, love supernatural anything really, and it’s nice to sometimes see elements of it in books you wouldn’t expect. Here it seemed a little contrived and clunky. It did it’s job, it provided the murky backstory to a bland police chief, and advanced the plot to enable it all to be solved when all hope seemed lost. I’m puzzled by the whole thing though. If whatever force in the dolls is trying to help abducted children, why hadn’t it saved any of the other kidnapped girls? It doesn’t make sense that there’s a supernatural force picking and choosing which little girls to help, and leaving others to die or go through hell. There also wasn’t a massive amount of time and manpower dedicated to investigating the abduction. As a former Atlanta cop I would have expected Chad to be a little more open to calling in outside help, like the FBI, especially for the abduction of a 4 year old. Definitely when he got the inkling that trafficking may be the true motive. He would know that the FBI would have more information and manpower to delve into it all. Instead he called his former college roomie, now the County Sheriff, to ask for help. Just seems a little half arsed for the supposedly desperate search for a 4 year old who had been taken by a trafficking ring. He also only bothers to call the FBI with the trafficking information AFTER his investigation ended. Why on earth wouldn’t you get the information to the immediately so they can start investigating the trafficking ring?! Also, seeing as days pass you’d think the traffickers would have got themselves out of dodge quick smart when they got the suspicion the police were getting closer. Instead they cause more urgency in those investigating the case by kidnapped the reporter. The reasoning was that killing her would leave too many questions, but surely taking her is even riskier, no? I also found it a tad far fetched that 12 children had been abducted and nobody had linked the cases, or raised concern. I know it wasn’t 12 girls from one town, but the disappearance of children usually gets a lot of press, yet nobody had a clue about these missing girls.

A lot of the clues seem to appear much too effortlessly. Ashley, the reporter, overhears two of the people involved arguing about the very crime she’s investigating, giving just enough information but not too much, she manages to get clues from a computer, owned by a suspect, by cat burglar-ing up. A neighbour just happens to note comings and goings, a building manager managed to see a suspect dump rubbish bags in the building’s dumpster - which, luck would have it, hasn’t been emptied. It took a while before anyone noticed the odd doll that had appeared, yet surely one of the first jobs at the crime scene would have been to ask the parents if anything was odd or different. It’s also the second time in a child abduction investigation that Chad has missed THE SAME CLUE. He also had a ‘vision’ of another missing girl, he watched her die in said vision, yet he never bothered to investigate further, surely that would have eased his mind that he wasn’t crazy, and, whatever the supernatural hijinks, he did have a vision. There are just a lot of holes, a lot of inconsistencies (like telling Ken to instruct the incoming squad cars to switch off their sirens so as not to wake everyone, then LITERALLY letting the little girl switch his on. It’s like the author left for a break after the no sirens part then came back having forgotten what she’d just written), a lot of illogical leaps, a lot of luck, yet a complete lack of urgency or anything resembled true investigation.

One of the most ridiculous parts was the description of the sheriff’s handlebar moustache being basically lady catnip. Now THAT is fantasy. Plus, in flashback, Chad ‘puts on a uniform’. He’s a detective. Senior enough that he walked into a job as chief of police, so why was he wearing a uniform?! Some of the language strikes me as odd too - ‘cripes’?!

Overall it’s just a little bit of a mess and a hodge podge, without any real skill or depth. Not impossible to read but nothing at all special, and it took me longer than usual to read it as it was a little bit of a slog. I said I was torn at the start of the review....having really thought about it though, I’m no longer torn. It just isn’t a good book.