Another interesting mystery - even though it's book 3 in a series, it stands well on its own.

Katie's in the midst of celebrating when she finds her aunt murdered and her uncle clearly the one they plan to blame. Even though she knows it looks damning, she can't imagine he'd do what they think he did.

I found the mystery interesting - heartbreaking, I can't even imagine going through what Katie did. But I was disappointed with how much Katie did even though people warned her off and didn't want her involved. I was frustrated, in the end, that she didn't even put her faith in her partner.

I found the final wrap up a little flimsy but it still worked. I do love that she works with her dog. All in all, interesting police procedural.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Katie's aunt is found dead and her uncle who is also a cop like her is charged with the murder. But Katie knows he couldn't possibly kill her. Though she is not assigned to the case, she is determined to find the killer. She works in the cold case department and through one of the earlier cases, which show a stark resemblance to her aunt's death, she tracks the killer.
It is interesting read, though there are some characters which I felt were either unnecessary or did not get the attention that they deserved. However, it was an engaging through and through and kept me guessing till the very end.
I haven't read the other books in the Katie Scott series, but this was a good one.

This series is just fantastic. I love the characters. The setup, the movement of the plot are done with ease.
Katie finds her dead aunt - shocked at the possibility her uncle could be a murderer. Desperate to prove his innocence, Katie hunts for the killer.

Another great instalment of the Katie Scott series. Like the relationships that Katie is managing to build within her town and police force. Thanks for the opportunity to read

Another great installment in the series. I love Katie's character and this was an interesting case. Can't wait for more.

This is a police procedural.
It is full of twists and turns, but I felt that the storyline was a bit weak.

Really enjoyed this more than I expected! Definitely will buy more by this author! Thanks for the ARC!

I seem to have a knack for discovering new mystery/crime series when the characters have already established themselves. This is the third book in The Detective Katie Scott series by Jennifer Chase and the author succeeds in letting me know enough about the main character to jump in and read this as a standalone novel.

There really isn't much to fault in the book. It's fast paced with solid characters and even though Katie suffers from anxiety and PSTD after returning from her two tours in Afghanistan, she doesn't let that overshadow her ability to lead the cold cases department in the Pine Valley police department and solve difficult cases.

When her uncle, the local sheriff, is accused of murdering his wife, Katie is forced to step away from the investigation by the acting sheriff. Convinced her uncle is innocent, she starts going through cold cases looking for similarities to the current case. Against all odds and with the help of her military dog, Katie soon discovers connections others have overlooked. Reinterviewing people of interest in previous cases leads to a number of suspects. I enjoyed trying to sort through the means and motives of the suspects along with Katie, knowing time was limited with her uncle facing a murder charge.

A pleasure to read. Looking forward to catching up with the rest of the series.

A copy of this book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley for review.

Third book in series, but could be read as a stand alone (I didn’t know it was part of a series but am going to go look for the other books!). Katie works cold cases for the PD she is part of. After working one case and looking for the next her Aunt is murdered after a celebration party and her Uncle is their prime suspect. With careful choosing her next case has shocking similarities to her aunts murder so Katie can help prove his innocence while catching the real killer. Through a series of twists and turns, Katie finds out so much about herself and those around her. This book was action packed and the characters a delight. Can’t wait to read more!

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Thank you NetGalley, Jennifer Chase and Bookouture for this edition and hearing my honest review. Looking forward to reading more with you
#partner

When I had requested this ARC I wasn't aware that this novel is a part of a series. I think the book stands pretty well on its own, and you probably don't have to read the previous books to understand this one. But, I also felt a certain level of disconnect with the characters and that could have been due to this book being part of a series instead of a standalone.

Plot - 3/5
The story was good. It made sense. A murder happens and it's solved by the end of the novel. It was nothing ground-breaking but not too shabby either. I liked the way the author tied up the murders together. We follow a few cold cases along with the active case. Though there wasn't as much intrigue as I would have liked the simple plotline is done well.

Pacing - 5/5
The pacing was excellent. It didn't drag at any point. There were action scenes where necessary. It was fast-paced and engaging throughout the novel.

Characters - 3/5
The characters sounded a bit shallow. I didn't know much about them (maybe because I directly the third book in the series?) and honestly, I wasn't much interested in them either. I also had no feelings whatsoever when the murderer was revealed. Characterization fell too flat for me.

Set-up - 4/5
The descriptions were good. I liked how the author tried to bring in the PTSD representation as well as the dog as her constant support. The murder scenes were described well too.

Writing - 3/5
The writing was ok. But, I had major problems with the dialogues. It felt stunted and staged. It didn't sound natural. Some dialogues were like those feel-good posters that you see on Facebook. "You can do it!" and so on. Who talks like that in real life? Except maybe your therapist? There were times when I cringed at the dialogues. It could be a "me" thing but I think the dialogues could have been more refined and natural.

Overall rating - 3.5

Grading - Borrow grade - Book worth borrowing from the library or trading with your friends/family.
Star Rating - ⭐⭐⭐

Detective Katie Scott finds her aunt stabbed to death in her home. Her uncle, the Sheriff, says that he didn't do it ...although it's one of his knives at the crime scene. Being the prime suspect, he is arrested, much to Katie's dismay.

Katie is assigned to work cold cases and is warned to stay away from investigating her aunt's murder. But Katie finds a way to work around that .... she finds a cold case that her uncle had investigated years ago. She's a smart enough detective that she can look into two cases at once ... right?

With her partner and a few friends from her military days, and a link to a murder committed 12 years earlier, it becomes a hunt for a serial killer. What's their connection? The closer to the truth Katie gets, the more danger she is in. There are eyes watching her every move.

Katie suffers PTSD following her two tours in Afghanistan as a member of the K9 team . She is secretly seeing a therapist to help with the flashbacks, panic and anxiety she suffers daily. My favorite 'person' is Cisco, her partner K9 while in the military. She managed to bring him home with her and they work together almost as one.

This is a well written action-filled page turner. There are twists and turns with multiple suspects to follow. Characters are solidly defined and I enjoyed how they all relate to each other .. sometimes with sarcasm, sometimes with humor. The mystery suspense starts with the very first page and hold steady until the final unexpected conclusion.

Although 3rd in this series, this is easily read as a stand alone, however, I do recommend reading them in order.

Many thanks to the author / Bookouture / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

#FlowersonHerGrave #NetGalley

I quite liked this book. It may have started out on the slow side but it really picked up midway through and ended with a bang! The main character Detective Katie Scott was very likeable and well described. I especially liked the family dynamics as well as Katie's relationships with co-workers. The murder was especially gruesome and it was very interesting to learn of the police procedures and forensics involved in solving the case, as well as Katie's gut instincts in solving the case. In the course of Katie's investigation she identified several suspects but I never figured out the killer until it was revealed in the end.

I would recommend to family and friends and anyone who loves a good police procedural.

Special thanks go NetGalley and Bookouture for and ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Wow! What a thrilling mystery that kept me captivated from the first page to the last!

I voluntarily reviewed this book.

3rd in the series and a joy to be back in the company of Katie and Cisco. When Katie’s beloved aunt is murdered and she’s banned from being a part of the investigation she has to combine her cold case work to unravel the culprit. Great read with excellent developments in the sub plot and a cracking ending too

WOW, what a read! The plot was intense, powerful and thrilling and held me captive all the way through! The characters fairly leaped off the page, and the tension was palpable. If you are looking for a book that you just CAN’T put down, then this is DEFINITELY the book for you!

Admittedly, I am writing this review six months after I read the book, as I was dreadfully behind in writing. However, I cannot forget a single aspect of this book, including the traumatic response Detective Katie Scott has when she discovers that her aunt has been brutally murdered. Her uncle is the town's sheriff and as the next of kin is usually the primary suspect, Katie is forced to look at her uncle. However, because they are related, Katie is transferred to the cold case division.

Is it because they are related, or could there be another reason that Katie is being pulled away from the case? Stubbornly, Katie begins to dig and dig, and the more she gets into her uncle's files, the more concerned she gets. Actually, she finds evidence of a case years ago that seems like it just might be a connection as to what happened to her aunt. Will Katie successfully prove her uncle's innocence? Or will he be arrested for the brutal murder.

This fast-paced story kept me guessing and more than riveted, page after page. Because I had read the first two books in the series, I was more than familiar with Katie's aunt and uncle, as well as how close she was to the both of them. I am one who is devoted to reading series from the beginning, and when the fourth book, Last Girls Alive, came up for review this upcoming October, I went ahead and read these first three books, including Little Girls Sleeping and Her Last Whisper.

Jennifer Chase is doing a fabulous job at making Katie someone that is very easy to relate to. I also love the supporting characters in each book. With excellent writing and engrossing storylines, I am more than eager to continue this thrilling series.

Many thanks to Bookouture and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

I love the Katie Scott series so was really pleased to be able to review book 3. This story finds Katie still working in the cold case department, with Deputy McGaven and still battling her PTSD demons. The Undersheriff is against the cold case department and tells Katie that McGaven can only work part time there as he’s needed on patrol. She’s aware they have to prove their worth.
They start with the case of Sam Stiles, who disappeared some 12 years earlier, and his mother is still desperately clinging to the hope he will he found. She visits Detective Paul Patton, an old colleague of her Uncle’s as he worked on the case, she’s convinced he’s holding something back, but what is it and would it help her unravel the mystery?
Later, at her Aunt and Uncle’s tenth wedding anniversary celebrations, when Detective Patten storms in and starts shouting at her Uncle, Katie becomes even more uneasy.
Nothing can prepare her however, for the tragedy she finds the following morning when she goes to collect her Uncle Wayne for their morning jog. He takes her through the house to the laundry room where she finds the butchered body of her beloved Aunt Claire. Sheriff Scott swears that he didn’t commit the crime, but he has no clue what happened. He’s arrested on suspicion of murder but all those that know him, Katie included, are convinced he didn’t do it.
Katie throws herself into work and eventually finds the body of Sam Stiles and his girlfriend, but their good work goes unrecognised as Undersheriff Martinez takes the credit. In her Uncles absence, Martinez makes it quite clear that he intends to disband the cold case unit.
Handling the cold case of Cynthia Adams, Katie is convinced her injuries are the same as her Aunt Claire’s and she decides to pursue this alongside her Aunt’s case - without telling her colleagues. In the meantime, Katie and McGaven are run off the road and shot at, making her even more determined to get to the bottom of who wishes them so much harm.
Pursuing several lines of enquiry, Katie decides to draw out the killer and sets a trap. She sets off with Cisco, but is she headed into certain danger? This was another brilliant story in the series and I’m looking forward to the next one already.

Detective Katie Scott arrives at the house of her aunt and uncle the morning after a party celebrating their 10th wedding, only to find that her aunt is dead and her uncle is the prime suspect. As a family member she shouldn’t get involved so Katie continues with her work in the cold case unit, while following the investigation of her Aunt Claire's murder on the side. After some digging she finds a case where the victim suffered injuries consistent with those of her aunt. Following this trail may clear her uncle’s name, if she can find the real killer.

I thought that Katie was a fantastic character, suffering symptoms of PTSD after 2 tours in Afghanistan. It was interesting to read from the perspective of a veteran working in a high stress law enforcement position.

Flowers On Her Grave worked well as a standalone but as it is book three in the Detective Katie Scott series, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the first two books to get a better understanding of the main character and her past. Still, this was a gripping and punchy detective novel and I’m looking forward to going back and reading the previous instalments.

Flowers on Her Grave is (as of this review) book three of three in the Katie Scott series.

I did not read the first two in this series, but the book well enough on its own: Katie Scott, niece of the current Sheriff, is the lead, and only, fulltime investigator of the cold case squad. My impression is that she was shunted to this "department" due to something that occurred in the previous book, but I was not sufficiently invested to go find out. She has a (male) deputy who alternates working with her an working patrol.

Scott suffers from anxiety and PTSD, and also works with a K9 - the dog she had with her on her two tours in Afghanistan. However, her PTSD seems to come and go when it's necessary and/or convenient for the plot.

When her uncle is arrested for the murder of his wife (Scott's aunt), Scott is barred from working the case. Why she would be considered as working the case at all, given that she is in cold cases, not homicides, is not explained. But since she's a maverick, rogue cop, of course, and doesn't trust the detectives in her own department, she starts investigating it anyway, solving one unrelated cold case along the way, and working on another cold case that happens to feature her uncle the Sheriff, the requisite menacing, seemingly evil (male) Undersheriff, and a couple of other (male) people tied to the department.

I mention the sexes here because it seems Scott is the only female in the entire department. All the other women in the book seem to be wives, mothers, or victims. If the author mentioned other female law enforcement department members, it was in passing and so inconsequential that it flew right past me. I'm not saying that women have to be represented as x% of every book. But in a medium sized Sheriff's Department, it strains credulity that the one and only woman would be the Sheriff's niece. She seems to be the only competent investigator as well, given that the detectives assigned to the case - who have also worked for the Sheriff for years - seemed to want to just shrug and say, "Well, he did it." and close the case.

The story is fairly straightforward: Scott investigates both her aunt's murder and the cold case, often leaving her partner behind and not bothering to tell anyone, from her mentor to her boyfriend, where she's going, particularly at the end, where she could easily have been killed if the bad guys were more intelligent than they appeared at the beginning of the book, doing an elaborate frameup of her uncle based on resentment for the activities in the cold case. Luckily for her -as is the case in many books of this nature - the posse shows up to help her out.

It isn't a bad book, but it isn't a great one. It's an easy, middle of the road mystery, decent enough to capture your attention for a couple of hours, and sometimes, that's exactly what you need.

Three stars out of five.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the reading copy.

This is book 3 in the series and I highly recommend checking them all out. Katie is such a lovable character and her sidekick is her adorable and badass ex-military dog Cisco.

Her Aunts murder is so sad because her Aunt & Uncle were such a cute couple. I wasn’t overly surprised by the killer reveal but the investigation kept me fully engaged. Her Uncles colleagues turned against him pretty quickly which added to the suspense of finding the real killer as quickly as possible but with very little support. And, of course the ending was exciting and dramatic.

I received a copy of the ebook via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review