Blood Sins

Blood Sins by Kay Hooper

Young, vulnerable, attractive, Tessa Gray looked like the perfect victim. Which was why Noah Bishop of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit recruited the novice operative to use as bait for a killer hidden inside the Church of the Everlasting Sin–a fortified mountain compound where at least two women have already been murdered in ways that defy explanation. By entering the cult’s compound, Tessa will expose herself to the dark magnetism of its leader and his fanatically loyal followers. Once she’s inside, no one, not even Bishop or the town’s chief of police, can guarantee she’ll come out alive. And not even Tessa knows if she’s strong enough to resist the lure of a killer who is less than human.

--Blood Sins by Kay Hooper, Copyright ©2009 by Kay Hooper, published by Bantam Books

My Review

Young widow Tessa Gray has been targeted by the Church of the Everlasting Sin—and that’s exactly what she wants. Working undercover for Noah Bishop and the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit, part of Tessa’s job is to find out why (so far) two people have been murdered, one of them an undercover member of the SCU. Sarah had been living inside the compound, gathering information and, whenever possible, smuggling out “special” children so they could no longer be used for the Reverend Samuel’s questionable purposes. Now she’s dead, her body found several miles downriver from the Church’s compound.

When the Church starts to actively recruit Tessa, she is reluctant but plays along. After all, how else is she supposed to get information that will help the SCU bust open the Church and expose the Reverend? Things get a little dicey when the local police chief, Sawyer Cavanaugh, makes his suspicions of the church obvious. Tessa must decide if she can trust Sawyer and if in doing so, can she risk exposing him to the evil that is surely a part of the Church?

A normal Kay Hooper story involves a mystery along with a romance between two of its characters. This story veers from that norm, in that there’s an attraction between Tessa and Sawyer, and that’s it. The rest of the story, say 80% or so, is all about the mystery of the Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel and his connection to Blood Dreams’ serial killer. And even when that mystery is resolved, there are still too many unanswered questions, leading to the twelfth story in the series, Blood Ties.

It’s a good story with enough action to keep the story moving, but it definitely isn’t a stand-alone read. It’s hard to fully understand what’s going on unless you’ve read Blood Dreams and if at all possible, the entire previous 10 books in the Bishop/SCU series. I have, and I’m still a little bit in the dark. Drawing a flowchart detailing all the characters and their attributes along with their varied connections probably would have helped.

I give this story THREE STARS.