Carved in Darkness

       It was October first.
       Sabrina rolled over and stared at the wall. She knew the date. Not because she'd checked her calendar or because the leaves on the trees outside her bedroom window were turning from green to gold. No. It was because she hadn't been able to take a deep breath for weeks now. The feeling that someone was watching her. The long hours stretched between the setting and the rising of the sun spent wandering her silent house, kept awake by the certainty that if she closed her eyes, she'd never be able to open them again. That was what told her what day it was.
      Fifteen years ago, today, she'd been kidnapped. Held for eighty-three days. Raped. Tortured. Left for dead in a churchyard.
  

Carved in Darkness by Maegan Beaumont is such an intense read it left me breathless. And the killer who is after Sabrina is downright scary. Be warned, the bits with him in it are pretty dark and graphic. Luckily, most of the book centers around Sabrina Vaughn, who has managed to stay off the killer's radar for the past fifteen years. Until now. Someone's tipped him off that she's still alive, and now he's determined to get her back. At any cost. As for Sabrina, she's a lot stronger now, but still a bit broken inside:  she's a homicide detective who's afraid of the dark and who has a hard time trusting anyone, including her partner, and an even harder time admitting she might need some help. That's where Michael O'Shea comes in; he's after the killer, too. And at first he wanted to used Sabrina as bait, but now he just wants to keep her safe.

This book definitely qualifies as a thriller. It's very suspenseful and Beaumont does an excellent job of maintaining that tension from the first page to the last. It's not a perfect read, some of the things about Michael's situation felt a little far-fetched, and Sabrina's roommate and younger siblings had such minimal roles I wondered why they were there at all, but overall I ended up liking this book a lot, although I could have done without all the language in it, especially all those F-bombs. But if you don't mind that...

Happy Reading!