This book was good enough to motivate me to read the entire series. Although I didn't find the characters always to be particularly likable, they were very human. The mystery is secondary to the bigger story and that sets the mood for the entire reading experience. I found the book to be kind of dark and though the story has a fairly neat ending, it leaves a feeling of hopelessness that not every reader may find appealing. I like the dark and human side of things, so I found it to be a great use of time.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Dear Mr Hiebert.

I read and enjoyed the previous book in this series, A Thorn Among the Lilies. Well, I enjoyed it more than this one.

In your acknowledgements you thank your editor, John Scognamiglio for allowing you to come in at nearly double your contracted word count so that you could tell the story the way you wanted to tell it. A pity you didn't listen to him, or that he didn't wield his red pen anyway.

Sticks and Stones is very wordy - far too wordy. You could lose 1/3 of the book and it would be better for it. There are pages devoted to Noah Stokes explaining the theory of his book explaining the relationship of schizophrenia to Judges and some other book in the bible.

I don't need, or necessarily want, to know how luminol, or a myriad of other chemicals, or security lights work. I know they do. That's enough. If I am curious, I will use Google.

And writing lines like '...nor did Leah/Dan/Abe/Jonathon (take your pick) have any way of knowing at that very moment.......' It KILLS the suspense!

As did the following line .....'So it's a race, he thought, between a fluorescent bulb and the girl of my dreams.' I mean, really...how cheesy is that? And at that point in the story, it doesn't need cheesy. At this point Jonathon's girlfriend Caroline (Carry) is in the clutches of a killer and Jonathon is trying to rescue her. The light bulb isn't mentioned again, and then he goes into long memories about his grandfather.......the point being???

I lost count of the times we are told that the streets in Blue Jay Maples are all named after birds, that they wind and wend endlessly and have deep ditches on both sides, and that Noah Stokes house is baby blue with white trim.

And yet Mr Heibert, you can write, and write well. The final action scene is wonderful. Do yourself a favour and stick to the story. Lose all the extraneous stuff.

2.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley via Kensington Books for providing a digital ARC for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Let me start out by warning you that this is part of a series. I started to read it and decided to look up the author on Amazon.com. I'm glad I did because I purchased the books in the series before this and read them so I could give this book a fair review. This book is well written and Leah, the main character is a strong female lead. This book is suspenseful and leaves you guessing through out. I don't want to say much and give anything away so read this series and learn about the stickman and if he is or isn't dead...