What Waits in the Woods (Detective Rita Myers #2)
By Terri Parlato, narrated by Christina Moore, Leah Horowitz

When I listened to the first book in this series, I liked Detective Rita Myers and her audiobook narrator so much that I wanted to get to see/hear Rita and her narrator again. And I got my wish! Rita and her narrator, Christina Moore, are back with Leah Horowitz narrating things from the POV of former ballerina, Esmé Foster.

Esmé has come home to her brother and her father, still living in their family home in Graybridge. After a career ending injury and a live in relationship that wasn't working, Esmé is facing up to the guilt she feels for abandoning her family and friends when her ballet career was the most important thing in her life. Now she feels like she's crawling home with her tail between her legs, a failure. But she really doesn't have any time to focus on how she feels about herself when she drives up to her old family home to find there has been a body found behind the family home. With this stressful homecoming and a dad dying from a life of abusing alcohol, life just gets more stressful and confusing by the day.

Detective Rita Myers is in charge of the investigation and there are a lot of moving parts with this one. Several people aren't telling all they know, some people might be involved in shady shenanigans, weird and deadly things happened in the past that might be connected to the present, and Esmé drove me bonkers by walking or running madly through the woods time and time again. Who does that when someone has just been murdered in those very woods? Still, Rita and her narrator didn't let me down and Esmé's narrator was good, too. I hope to see Rita again in the future. She may be about sixty years old but she's a long way from being finished getting crimes solved.

Thank you to RB Media, Recorded Books, and NetGalley for this ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for a chance to read this book.
I am giving this thriller a 3/5 stars due to it really not being very unique. The plot is one that is overdone and the ending really just fell flat for me. I really wanted more of the main character to be trapped and forced to do ballet but it went a total different direction which was just meh.

This book was just ok. The story had no spunk. Everything felt weighted down and slow. It needed some excitement or more suspense to get this up to a higher rating.

At first I was not sure I was going to like this book. The cop is too much a detective and Esme is "Perfect". She has never done a thing wrong in her life. She is perfect. A perfect ballerina who has lost her job, dancing, due to hip issues. So she is forced to come home (I love books where the woman has to come home but usually they have some flaws). So she drives home from Syracuse where she has left her equally perfect boyfriend and finds her bestie dead in the yard. Well she finds the ambulance and cops there.
Mr. York is the distinguished creep. Jake is the hot guy who is single and still hot.
Rita, the detective is gonna have to solve this murder. Who killed Esme's bestie?
I guess I got attached to everyone.
The narration is absolutely perfect. I loved it so much!

A twisty read. Kept me guessing from beginning to end. I would suggest reading it over listening. Wasn’t a huge fan of the narration.

Thank you netgalley for giving me this advanced copy. I have to say I was slightly disappointed in this book as I enjoyed Terri Parlatos first book much more. I was pulled into the plot at the beginning but felt myself getting slightly bored towards the middle and end. I felt it was a little too long as well.