Title: The Last Thing You See
Series: Rachel Dixon
Author: Marie Batiste
Date Added: March 26, 2020
Date Started: June 23, 2020
Date Finished: July 9, 2020
Reading Duration: 16 days
Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural/Paranormal, Horror, Mystery/Murder Mystery

Pages: 185
Publication Date: February 5, 2020
Publisher: Self
Media: eBook/Kindle

Riley Green’s parents came home one morning to find their daughter missing and human organs in their dining room.

Following a ten-month suspension, forced rehab and a tumultuous divorce, New Orleans Detective Rachel Dixon is finally stitching her life back together when she is called to a strange crime scene. Joined by her new partner, Elias Crowe an intuitive elf dealing with discrimination in the department, Rachel starts the search for Riley’s killer.

Soon the investigation leads them to a series of strange murders not just in the city but across the nation. Desperate to find the killer the detectives seek help from an undead blood analyst, a standoffish necromancer, a tree spirit, and a living sculpture. But when the killer seems to have set their eyes on Rachel all the help and magic in the world may not be enough to catch the elusive serial killer.

Join the detectives as they maneuver through a familiar world stitched together with magic, blood, and animosity.

Rachel Dixon is a flawed but intensely likable detective who is being overly punished for the mistakes she’s made in the past.  The world merged with a magical one around twenty years ago, and the oddness and curiosity around this event is maintained throughout the novel as even the inhabitants of it remain clueless to the entirety of the effects.  The characters treat the world like their world (as you do).  There’s no info dumping; you’re given enough to understand how things work, and that’s all it is.  It’s like if you lived in a reality where magic existed, you wouldn’t bat an eye at it when it manifests, because it would be as commonplace as a smartphone.

Rachel is carrying the burden of not only a nasty divorce, but also the rejection of her daughter due to overwork and alcoholism.  it’s obvious she was neglecting her duties as a mother in focusing on her stressful job, which in turn led to drinking, but it’s hard not to feel bad for her especially when she’s full of guilty regret.   Same as the world-building, we experience Rachel’s past as it hinders and affects her present.  We know it was bad, but the piecemeal details stir curiosity without utterly fulfilling it, which just makes it all the more intriguing.

“It’s easier to connect with the dead for me. I don’t know why?
“Because, they’re already gone, so they can’t leave you.”

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as her connection and focus on the deceased was a major catalyst for her divorce along with her daughter wanting nothing to do with her.  We can only hope there will be some sort of reconciliation in later installments; however, this is only the setting/background for events.

This is one of those books where you absolutely hate the antagonist and want them to get their comeuppance as soon as they’re introduced, which is in the first chapter.  The Collector is a complete monster, and it is his complete lack of remorse or empathy for other human beings that immediately grips you from the get go.   You want this person to die in the same way his victims did.  I love my sympathetic villains, but there’s something about having one you absolutely loathe and want to see tortured.  There’s a dark catharsis in having a character do despicable things so that you don’t feel terrible when your hero skins them alive…or maybe that’s just me *awkward laughter*  I don’t know if this is the route the story is going to take, but I’ll be rooting for Rachel the entire time if it does.

The ending is a bit more abrupt than I expected, but the main/smaller arc of the story is resolved, just not the overarching one of the series.

4.5 stars.