*The Reaping* by Jess Lourey is an absolute page-turner. Atmospheric, tense, and dark, this book pulls you in from the first page. The characters are fantastic, with Steinbeck and Reed proving once again that they are professionals at solving cold cases. While the first book gave us a glimpse of Van Reed, this one dives deep into Steinbeck's past, shedding light on what makes him tick. The plot is gripping, centered around a family brutally murdered in the isolated community of Alku, which is portrayed so mysteriously and vividly. When a similar murder happens years later, despite the alleged perpetrator being indisposed, the case gets stranger, leading Van and Harry back to Alku.

The ending is a cliffhanger, but it's so well done that I can't wait to dive into the next book. If you're into intrigue, dark suspense, and thrillers, this series is a must-read. Jess Lourey is a highly recommended author, and this book deserves a full 5 stars!

Thank you NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer & Jess Lourey for the arc!

Based on vibes alone, this was creepy and awesome. I really liked the past timelines. It was great to see these characters again, but this one fell a little flat for me.

This can absolutely be read as a standalone as this is the second in the series. Murder, myster, and horror bring together the perfect detective team.

Cold-case detectives Steinbeck and Reed are back and on the case. This time, they are looking into the village of Alku, a remote and insular village, that is a step back in time.

Alku was founded by seven Finnish families and they have their own way. They all own the town and are ruled by a board of '7 Families'. They are also ruled by a Blood Witch, who will often call for a 'reaping'. A terrible murder of an entire family 25 years ago has the same details as a murder that just happened to a guard at the private prison/nursing home in the town of Alku.

As expected Van and Harry are plagued by their own issues - Harry and his missing sister, Van with her nightmares/predictions. Using the motivation from both of these, they work together to save the children of Alku from the long tradition.

As with The Taken Ones, both Harry and Van are complicated characters. Complicated and the kind of book characters that I love. I'm rather avoidant of any series after devoting so much time to Game of Thrones, but I will be the first in line for the Steinbeck and Reed partnership. With every book, we peel back the layers on each of our leads.

Read The Taken Ones (or don’t) and then digging into The Reaping. Jess Lourey has a fantastic duo on her hands.

I love this series. It was the beautiful combination of spooky and crime thriller all mixed into one.

The Steinbeck and Reed series is one of those series that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time.

Steinbeck and Reed are in a the Finnish Town of Alku where outsiders are usually not welcome. I love the spooky feel of this town and almost culty vibes. We also got a mention of her other book Bloodlines. It’s fun to see the connections between the books.

Steinbeck and Reed have a great chemistry when it comes to working together and you can really see them flow together.

The plot is there and is full of twist that you won’t see coming. This is the perfect book to curl up with on a dark fall night.

Genre: Thriller
APK: Ebook
Pages: 326
Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Series or Standalone: Book 2 of the Steinbeck and Reed Series

I absolutely loved this book and series! I cannot wait for the next one! 😍 I love how the book ended and I always try to solve the mystery before the end but I didn't see that coming ,I loved it!

Before I cracked this book open, I told myself that I need to go back and read The Taken Ones since it’s the first one in this series and I had every intention of doing just that, buuut I found this book boring.

The setting and characters felt odd to me, not the creepy way that they’re portrayed to be, but in a way that kept me from enjoying the book.

The first 50% was terribly slow, it was hard to keep up with all the characters that were introduced, and it was extremely hard to pick this book up after I set it down so many times. The ending left on a cliffhanger, but I don’t think I can make myself read another book in this series.

I was a massive fan of The Taken Ones, which was the first book in the Steinbeck and Reed series. So, I was super excited to delve back into Harry and Van’s world!

I REALLY enjoyed The Reaping, but I didn’t love it quite as much as the first book. It just didn’t seem to pack the same punch for me.

This book can absolutely be read as a standalone. But, I feel like the series so good that it’s worthwhile to start at the very beginning.

I LOVED the choice of Alku as the setting for the story. It was a small, weirdly tight-knit Finnish community where the main industry was a nursing home for serial killers 😱. The town was the perfect mix of creepy and mysterious, and gave me major cult vibes!

I also really enjoyed getting to know Harry Steinbeck. He was such a mysterious figure in The Taken Ones, and it was really nice to learn about the man behind the immaculate suits.

This story had a bit of a slow start, but began to really pick-up at the 50% mark. However, the plot really kept me guessing the entire time. I developed a few theories about who was responsible for the murders, and they were all wrong 😅🫣.

The ending was unexpected and incredibly satisfying. But, that cliffhanger at the very end sent my mind into a complete tailspin. I can’t wait for the next book to see what happens next!

Read if you like:

✨Cold case mysteries
✨Small town settings
✨Local folklore

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Amazon Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Creepy dark and twisted.

A clear mystery that puts people on edge. If you can handle descriptive dark storytelling you will enjoy.

Thank you Thomas and Mercer and NetGalley for the ARC.

This is the second book in the Steinbeck and Reed series. While the storyline is different than The Taken Ones (book 1), the characters are introduced in the first book and further developed in this second installment. Therefore, I would highly recommend reading the books in order.

While I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first, it was still a good read. The story builds more slowly and not as fast paced. Book 1 leaves on a cliffhanger that this book addresses and so I was satisfied with that. We learn more details about Steinbeck’s past in this second book and I was happy about that. I definitely look forward to more in this series!


Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Stop it!!! That ending was a jaw dropper!!! I really like this authors writing. Always keeps me wanting more!!

When BCA agents Harry Steinbeck and Van Reed are called to Northern Minnesota to look into a case that mirrors a cold case from twenty-five years earlier, Harry feats that he will have to reopen terrible events from the past.

A gruesome murder has taken place in the small, isolated town of Alku. It mirrors the deaths of a man, woman, and their three children which took place in Alku twenty-five years earlier. First the victims are shot with a shotgun and then their heads are crushed.

Alku is not a welcoming place. Settled by Finns who escaped Finland ahead of a mob who wanted them dead, the town is insular in the extreme. Their only source of income is the nursing home for felons that they run in a school/sanitorium that has had many purposes over the years. Since one of the inmates was convicted of similar crimes, he becomes Harry and Van's first suspect. However, his physical disabilities make it impossible to be the perpetrator.

As Van and Harry look into the cold case, they find that there were a series of other suspicious events that happened at the same time. Two hikers attacked by bears and the disappearance of a local resident all happened within days of the murder.

Now, children are disappearing and Van and Harry wonder if it connects somehow with those old murders.

This was an interesting mystery. I especially like that both of the main characters have issues from their pasts that need dealing with. Harry's guilt over the disappearance of his younger sister - also twenty-five years ago - has driven his life choices ever since that day. Now, he has to confront them and the mother he blames for his sister's disappearance.

I liked the setting which is my hometown - Duluth, Minnesota - even though the author takes some liberties with the geography.

For me to get hooked into a series, the series has to be captivating, thrilling, and unputdownable. This series is one of those. This series books I will download the day they are published and will obsess over the characters and be impatient for the next book (hoping Jess Lourey is working on #3)!!

Agent Reed and Steinbeck are back again. This time up north in Duluth, MN. There is a bizarre murder and of course while they are up there they start to piece together facts from another murder in the same town from 25 years ago.

The town is Alku, near Duluth and is home to very heritage based Finnish people. They are descendants from parents straight from Finland who take their culture and family ways very seriously. They are also creepy af. The way Jess Lourey describes their long necks and big foreheads… I’ll be thinking about this story for a long time. There is a prison/nursing home that hosts serial killers who are now infirm and that is the base of the town and how they get income to add to the creepy factor.

Not only do you learn of the old traditions and try to piece together why there’s been these strange deaths in this small town, but this one gives more insight into Harry’s past and his connection to Duluth, where he grew up and where his little sister disappeared from. He has so much guilt from that time even though he was just 19 years old and in college.

I absolutely LOVE the relationship between Harry and Van. They are awesome partners and I’m wondering if there is something more there eventually.
They are two people who were broken, had pretty traumatic childhoods and who now protect and solve cold cases. Their stories unfold nicely in the first and second book of the series without compromising the story of the case they are working.

All of the characters are well written I can picture them in my head.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC, I cannot wait for more Reed and Steinbeck stories.

This book is slow burn. I liked the depth of the main characters and the gradual revelation of the town's history. Creepy and cultish. I did not figure out the bad guy, which I liked. You could feel the fear of the townsfolk and the frustration of Steinbeck and Reed in the investigation. The book ends with a cliffhanger.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC.

Minnesota is the land of 10.000 lakes. It seems as many in cold cases.

Harry Steinbeck, forensic scientist, and Agent Evangeline "Van" Reed, a former homicide detective in the Minneapolis PD, have been assigned to some strange happenings in northern Minnesota outside of Duluth through the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).

It appears that crime resides even in the smallest of towns. Alku was first settled by pioneers from Finland. To this day, the residents still hover over the folklore of the veri noita monster also called the Finnish Blood Witch. You're cautioned not to be out in the surrounding forests late at night. But then, living breathing humans have also left bloody footprints in this area.

When children go missing in Alku, Steinbeck and Reed must sift through some heinous cold cases of the area. Their search leads them to a serial killer named Matthias Millard also known as Matty the Mallet. Matty is now non-verbal and resides in a hospital for the criminally insane. Frustration lines their search. Is this a copy cat case or what?

The Reaping is #2 in the Steinbeck and Reed Series. I didn't read The Taken Ones #1 and that didn't cause any confusion. I did read Catch Her in a Lie (Steinbeck and Reed #0.5) which I absolutely enjoyed. This duo works well. Steinbeck is meticulous while Reed embraces chaos. What drives them both is the determination to solve cold cases from years past. There's enough creepy business here to keep the fires lit while this duo implements hardcore policing. Check it out.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Thomas & Mercer and to Jess Lourey for the opportunity.

this book was hard for me to get into but once i did it was good-if not a little odd! the people in it reminded me of a cult, and its always the ones you wouldnt have thought it!

This was a very slow slow paced book. Took me days to finish it only because I got uninterested in it. I didn't want to DNF it so I rode it out to the end. The twist at the end had me like 😲 but I feel like I read the whole book for just that little small reveal. 1st book was slightly better, only reason I gave it a 2 star was because I understood the references from the 1st book "The Taken Ones".

4.5 stars!

I LOVED this??? I have not read the first Steinbeck and Reed book but after finishing this one I immediately downloaded it onto my kindle. I have found recently that I really enjoy detective thrillers and I thought that the detective pair in this book were so interesting both individually and together and I truly hope Jess Lourey writes like 15 of these so I can keep watching them solve cases.

As for the actual case, I was so interested in the combination of religious discussion and occult/supernatural elements. Some other reviews compared this to Karin Slaughter novels, and I honestly have to agree! I also don't think that reading this book as a standalone hindered my experience, nor was the first book spoiled, but it did succeed in making me excited to go back and read the first book in the series!

Thank you to Thomas and Mercer and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Very good book, following two detectives as they investigate gruesome murders in a secluded community. The story was interesting, and I found the ending to be surprising. This is a series, and the last few lines set up a story for future books.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy. My opinions are my own.

There are plenty of small town secrets in Alku, a remote Minnesota town rich in the traditions of its Finnish settlers. Crimes committed twenty years ago are being copycatted, while the original perpetrator sits infirm in a prison cell.

‘By-the-book forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck and rogue BCA agent Van Reed must catch a cold-case killer who’s returned to abduct a small town’s children one by one in this heart-stopping novel from the Edgar Award–nominated author of Unspeakable Things.’

3.5 stars.

The Reaping was a twisty lil cold case mystery. I liked it……….. But I believe it’s because I LOVED book 1, The Taken Ones so, so much, that I found this one didn’t quite live up. But that’s just my simple opinion.

There was some creep factors throughout that were admirable and I totally got “The Village” vibes many times which I appreciated very much (Iykyk, that movie was wild and creepy as hell).

This is book 2 in the Steinbeck and Reed series. And while I believe this one can be read as a standalone, I’d still highly suggest reading book 1 first, simply because it's fantastic!

That said, I am certainly looking forward to the next one. I will never stop reading this series as I am 100% invested.

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for this arc in exchange for review.

Pub date: 9.3.24.