Caged

I think Caged was one of the best Thrillers I’ve ever read. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I don’t even know where to begin with. The story starts with 2 police officers called into a building where someone reported a “bad smell”. They both knew something was wrong because they could smell the familiar scent of death leaking from the building. However, on the way to find out the dead body, one of the officers gets severy injured. There was a trap with a shotgun on the stairs. Later FBI Special Agent/neuroscientist Dr. Sayer Altair is assigned to lead this case because they found a young girl’s dead body in a big cage that is meant for circus bears. She has been captured and killed slowly by starvation and dehydration. They also find out there is another girl captured somewhere just like this dead girl, and Sayer knows unless they find her within few days, the girl would be dead of dehydration.

I really enjoyed so many elements of this story. But what I enjoyed the most was that the creepy experiments the killer have forced upon the victims. Experiments that involve ritualistic and religious components. I’m a big fan of Robert Langdon series. So if you like old religions, conspiracy, and murder with ritualistic elements, you would love this book as I did for sure. Not as grand as Langdon series though it was interesting enough to keep reading.

I also liked the neurological research Sayer was conducting on serial killers. Sayer as a Dr. suspects that all the serial killers’ brains must be different from the “normal” human’s brains. Like some parts of the brain is underdeveloped. She suggests if they can find out this brain differences in early age, they can prevent certain crimes to happen. I have actually read the real research conducted on serial killers and psychopaths. I really liked the author decided to use this interesting research in this book, and the research plays the very important role in the story as in how Sayer ends up connecting all the murder cases in the book. Thus, later figuring out the killer.

Bringing “bad guy” to stir the investigation was not unique but still always interesting to find out how he has done it. Well if he has… Besides that, there are other fun elements like man-made DNA, underground catacombs, psychopomps, and bloody package that was sent in the middle of the night. This book is a must-read for this Summer. I highly recommend it to any Mystery/Thriller lover, or anyone who wants little chills and excitement at the beach.

This book was awesome! I devoured it. The murders were very interesting. Nana aka Sophia McDuff was my favorite character. I really want to read the next book in this series.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review.

Needs more than 5 stars- This was a phenomenal book written by a new author Ellison Cooper. As I started reading this book it became apparent to me that this author is going to be my next one click author. From the very beginning I was drawn into the pages and into the story. Wanting and needing to know what was going to happen next. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this book and write about it.