Every book I have read, written by Jess Lourey, I have given a five-star review. "The Taken Ones", defiantly gets a five-star review as well.

This was an edge-of-your-seat mystery that I did not want to put down. This book was the most creepy book of Jess's that I've read. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but there were a few images I had a hard time getting out of my head.

As usual, I loved the characters Jess created and was saddened by the pain the characters experienced.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)
Pub date: 9/19/2023

Thank you to @jesslourey, @netgalley, and @thomasmerceruk for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! This was my first Jess Lourey book and most certainly won’t be the last!

In 1980, three girls go into a Minnesota forest, but only one comes out, with no recollection of what happened. The Taken Ones case is born.

Fast forward to 2022, cold case detective Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck, are assigned to a homicide case of a woman buried alive. They wonder, why is it that they are called in, until they realize the woman buried alive may have a connection to the Taken Ones case.

We learn about Reed’s past, which helps her connect with victims and also gives her some “intuition” in solving other crimes.

There are definitely some twists I did not expect, which kept the book engaging! I felt as though the book wrapped up rather quick and was hoping for a little more about the kidnapper and a little longer of an ending.

The book is in multiple POVs and timelines 🙌🏻, which is always a fav over here. We learn a lot more about Reed than Steinbeck, so I’m hoping for a book two!

This book was actually really good. It took me a little while to really get into it but I really enjoyed it. I would love to see how the rest of the story with the partner plays out since it leave you on a cliffhanger. Overall I really enjoyed this read and looking forward to the next book!!

The Taken Ones (Steinbeck and Reed #1) by Jess Lourey .
Past: It’s the summer of 1980 in Minnesota where 3 girls go into the woods to swim in a creek and only 1 girl, Rue, returns with no memory of what happened. There was a legend of Bendy Man of taking the girls.
Present; It’s the summer of 2022, Evangeline “Van” Reed is the lead investigator on the case along with forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck. Van has secrets of her own. A woman’s body is found in a shallow grave, she was buried alive.
I enjoyed the dual time lines and character development. The different stories tie together. The story was creepy. Van was a strong character with past trauma, bullying and abuse she experienced. Despite the odds against her, she showed everyone she was a great detective and proved others wrong
Thanks #NetGalley, Jess Lourey, Thomas and Mercer
Publishing date: September 19, 2023

Jess Lourey weaves a tale as if she is laying a trap for her reader. Not a trap that will give you a fast and easy end. Each thread seems to wind itself into your imagination, tightening its grip until you are enthralled. Once you entangled, you can't help but become transfixed as broken pieces of the characters' lives and psyches dangle like bizarre fascinators. Empathy and revulsion meet between monsters imagined and monsters created.

The Taken Ones feels somehow familiar, like an old fashion who dunnit. As you learn more about the characters, their torments and tormentors, that familiarity becomes uncomfortable.

Van, and Harry from Jess's 'Catch Her in a Lie have an uneasy relationship based on mutual respect, with a healthy dose of distrust as they team up to solve a cold case and catch a killer.. We learn more about what drives Van to do the things she does. Van's nightmares compel her to reset her moral compass. Again and again.

Who is good? Who is bad? What is right? What is wrong?

Real monsters live among us, and the way Jess writes, so convincingly, leaves me believing that she has seen them too. The Taken Ones is a beautifully crafted murder mystery, that slips into the realms of horror. Some of the darker chapters were so visceral I had to take breaks to cleanse the palate of my imagination, in preparation for the next course. Each twist and turn deserved to be savoured.

In this book the bad is really awful, the good is fleeting, and it feels so real.

In The Taken Ones by Jess Lourey, two girls vanish, a woman is found buried alive, and between the two crimes lie decades of secrets yet to be unearthed.

I really liked Rue and her story and backstory. I struggled to like Van, but she eventually grew on me. The story had some very good twists and shocking moments.

I was able to read this book over the weekend. It was engaging and kept my interest. There were some parts I wasn't too sure about; it was hard to imagine Van's premonitions. But it does happen, so it was okay in the storyline.

There was good tension and mystery involved in the plot. The writing was done well, and I liked most of the characters. I felt they were all different and had their own backstories, which provided another element to the plot.

I would read more by this author. Four out of 5 stars for me.

#TheTakenOnes #NetGalley @AmazonPub

This book was so so good!!!! Van is on a mission to figure out what happened 42 years ago with a cold case of some missing girls who disappeared in the woods. I loved this author’s writing style, and I definitely plan to read more Lourey books! I can’t wait for this sequel to come out either!

Oh my goodness. This was good. Like, GOOD GOOD. I am ridiculously excited to see Steinbeck and Reed #1 listed on this book's page because I 100% need more Harry and Van. I can't even begin to describe the delicious suspense build-up throughout, the beautifully layered plot, the damaged characters, and the secrets. Oh, so many secrets. This book is everything I love about suspense, thrillers, domestic dramas, and police procedurals all rolled up in one. I could see this as a TV mini-series. I realize this is not much of a review, just a fan-girl rambling, but I want to ensure I don't give anything away.

Van Reed is a cold case detective in Minnesota. Harry Steinbeck is a forensic scientist. They're both guarded but seem desperate to open up to one another. Every time they start building trust, it is snatched away. They are working together on a cold case after a recent homicide is linked to the abduction of two young girls in 1980. The complexity of the characters and the intricacies of the plot have you feeling like you're on a runaway train. It was perfect, truly. I absolutely loved this book and cannot wait for more. I need a sequel, a prequel, and a looooong-running series. Please!

This is the first book in a new series following agent Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck. The premise was so intriguing to me, but I must have an unpopular opinion on this one after seeing the 4.39 average rating on Goodreads because unfortunately, I didn’t like it.

Now, I did finish it because the author kept me hooked enough to want to know what happened! And there were certainly some elements that I liked:
1. It felt like a classic detective show like NCIS, Bones or CSI.
2. The cold case merging with a present case always keeps me hooked to find the connection.
🫣3. The killer is CREEPY and twisted, and the author really delivers some disturbing narration to bring this POV to life.
4. The ending was pretty good!

But ultimately, there were two main things that didn’t work for me, and they were present throughout the entire book:
1. Too many subplots. There’s a lot of depth to these characters, and being the first book in a series, I totally get that we have to get tidbits of information unpacked over time. However, they were randomly scattered throughout the story and never fully revisited, which made them feel disconnected and jumpy.
2. There’s one main POV, and then a handful of chapters are told from other POVs. Because there were so few sections from the other viewpoints, they sometimes felt unnecessary to me. While I liked the inclusion from the killer’s POV because it was so fleshed out and distinct, the other secondary characters felt random to me.

Like I mentioned, this book has a ton of awesome reviews on Goodreads, so don’t let my review sway you if you want to check it out. There were ultimately just too many things going on for me that felt like 3 or 4 entirely different books at times.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for this e-ARC!

(2.5 Stars)

Ahh!! I really hope this is a series. I need more!! Great suspense & twists. This might be my fave Jess Lourey to date.

Until The Taken Ones, I’d only read Lourey’s Murder by Month mysteries. As I like her humoristic and down-to-earth style, I wanted to try one of her thrillers and wasn’t disappointed! Loved this book, even though I usually don’t pick books centering around child abuse. Full of unexpected plot twists throughout, well-paced. I wasn’t sure whether I would fully warm up to Van, the main character, until at about 70%. After that, I read in one sitting and LOVED the ending. Will read more of her thrillers and am looking forward to the sequel!

No one does it better than Lourey when it comes to missing girls and timelines set in the past. This one alternates between summer of 1980 and the present. We meet a cold case investigator with secrets of her own and a her partner, a forensic investigator. This was such a well written book that zips along at a fast pace. This is book one in a new series by Lourey and I definitely going to read book two and beyond. I highly recommend this to any mystery reader, especially one who grew up in the 80's like I did.

The Taken Ones
Jess Lourey
4.5⭐️

Synopsis: Summer 1980: Despite the local superstition that the Bendy Man haunts the woods, three girls go into a Minnesota forest. Only one comes out, dead silent, her memory gone. The mystery of the Taken Ones captures the nation.

Summer 2022: Cold case detective Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck are assigned a disturbing homicide—a woman buried alive, clutching a heart charm necklace belonging to one of the vanished girls. Van follows her gut. Harry trusts in facts. They’re both desperate to catch a killer before he kills again. They have something else in common: each has ties to the original case in ways they’re reluctant to share.

OMG, Jess Lourey writes such creeptastic tales. Once you pick them up you are fully immersed and The Taken Ones was no different. I was so caught up in this twisty tale and struggled to put it down. I was furiously flipping the pages to find out whodunnit! It was dark, gritty, and unpredictable.

All of her books are set in MN and I love it so much. It makes me feel so in the know while reading. This one had heavy Minneapolis references and I could clearly picture everything she described in vivid detail.

There are so many moving parts to this story and this detective duo. We end with an epilogue that absolutely has me craving more. Well played Lourey! I cannot wait to see where this series goes.

What I loved;
✨ Suspenseful Crime/Mystery
✨ Dual Timelines
✨ Flawed MC’s
✨ MN Setting

A huge thank you to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the digital ARC, and to Jess Lourey for the gifted physical ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I have read most of Jess Lourey’s books but this is by far my favorite book. I love the character Van and I hope there are going to be lots more books coming with her in them. There are several storylines in this book that are just chilling. I caught myself several times holding my breath or tapping my foot in nervousness. I didn’t want it to end but at the same time I was dying to see how it ended. This is one book that you have to read. I have had it finished for several days and can’t stop thinking about it.

This was one of my most anticipated @netgalley books I had! I've never read anything by Lourey. (That will now be changing!) It opened up with finding someone buried alive. That's one way to punch this book open!

There were a LOT of moving parts in this, including flashbacks to a wild past of the MC, which I ended up wanting a whole book on. I had such a hard time putting this one down this weekend, I was hooked. AND THEN SHE LEAVES YOU ON A CLIFFHANGER. (The book is wrapped up, don't worry. But now this will clearly be a series with these two officers which I am VERY excited about.)

Small town cold case is opened up after a woman is found buried alive 👀

I loved Van and Harry! Van had the most outrageous childhood and I think it helps her with cases. Some of the nightmares seem a little weird but it works. It adds something to the story.

I really couldn’t figure out what happened all that time ago but the story kept me reading until I found out and it was super interesting!

The ending really sets up us for a good book 2!

The Taken Ones is the first in a new series by Jess Lourey. I’m a new fan of this author this being my first read, but suffice to say it won’t be my last. Jess Lourey knows how to write compelling, complex and likeable characters. This one features our main character, Van who escaped a traumatic childhood to work investigating cold cases. The story features flashbacks to our heroines past which were chilling and foreboding. I am hoping that future books will explore more of her backstory and childhood. I read this book over two days, I couldn’t put it down. Jess Lourey writes a masterpiece of a thriller you won’t want to miss. I can’t wait for more Steinbeck and Reid.

Really enjoyed this novel. Story was very interesting and engaging. Looking forward to reading more by this author. Highly recommend!

Evangeline Reed was a woman with some seriously disturbing secrets, at least one of which threatened to sideline her in a quest to put to rest a decades old and still ongoing crime. Jess Lourey, the author who created Reed and put her in the new novel “The Taken Ones,” continues in her own ongoing and highly successful quest to lure various facies of her readers’ limbic systems into a dark room and her her way with them.

Evangeline’s childhood was a horror, a horror that seems to have given her a gift, and a drive, that she would eventually put to use as a Minneapolis homicide cop to save lives, and to help snatch others from their own horrors. Known in adulthood as Van, detective Reed required the trust and goodwill of her partner to literally turn her nightmares into evidence, and procure extremely unlikely legal convictions. But that partner was now gone, and Van Reed was now barely holding on to her job as a cold case investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, her drive and her apparently preternatural evil detector now untethered.
There is an abyss, and Jess Lourey knows where it is. The Taken Ones, a complex mystery-adventure with a terrifying antagonist, a really annoying boss, a close-in set of very sympathetic compatriots, and a real jerk-face of a rival, implores the reader to visit multiple abysses, which may or may not (no spoilers) be linked in interesting ways.

Agent Harry Steinbeck, straight laced, well bred, and very put together forensic scientist is now the closest thing to a partner to Van. He seems to know more than he lets on. The years 1980 and 2022 bookend the activities of a spooky, demented, and highly unusual taker-killer. The four decade gap in time allows Lourey to create complex and interesting then-and-now type characters that seem to appear in many of her books.

You should read several of Lourey’s books, many of which are organized in series. The Taken Ones sports the subtitle “A Reed and Steinbeck Thriller.” We can rightfully assume that this is the first in a series, and it looks like it is going to be an excellent ride. I strongly recommend you pick up The Taken Ones as soon as it is available (pre-order here), then wait impatiently with the rest of us for the second Reed and Steinbeck to come out. In the meantime, read Lourey’s breakthrough book “Unspeakable Things,” her latest and highly acclaimed “The Quarry Girls,” and one of my favorites “Bloodline.”

As usual with Jess Lourey novels I was gripped from the first page. By half a dozen chapters in, I was hoping that I wasn’t reading a standalone and hopeful for more Van and Harry. The multi-layered personalities of the two MC’s, their chemistry, a dastardly 40 year old mystery to be solved, forensics, a female sleuth. What more could you want?!! To say I loved The Taken Ones would be a huge understatement. Thanks for another page turner Jess! And thanks too to NetGalley for a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.