The Summer Children (The Collector, 3)
This FBI agent has come to expect almost anything--just not this...
When Agent Mercedes Ramirez finds an abused young boy on her porch, covered in blood and clutching a teddy bear, she has no idea that this is just the beginning. He tells her a chilling tale: an angel killed his parents and then brought him here so Mercedes could keep him safe.
His parents weren't just murdered. It was a slaughter--a rage kill like no one on the Crimes Against Children team had seen before. But they're going to see it again. An avenging angel is meting out savage justice, and she's far from through.
One by one, more children arrive at Mercedes's door with the same horror story. Each one a traumatized survivor of an abusive home. Each one chafing at Mercedes's own scars from the past. And each one taking its toll on her life and career.
Now, as the investigation draws her deeper into the dark, Mercedes is beginning to fear that if this case doesn't destroy her, her memories might.
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Community Reviews
I find Dot Hutchison's books cannot be put off. I usually get so entangled in the story that I have to stick with it long through the night to get to the end and see how she recounts her troubling and haunting stories, and book 3 was no exception to that rule.
This is another compelling story with the usual cast of characters: Vic, Mercedes and Eddison. In this book, we get to know more about each of them and how they work together so well. We also get better acquainted with Sterling and find her fitting right in on the team.
I like Mercedes's character a great deal. She has suffered so much in her life, and yet, she isn't hiding from her past. She's embracing it by choosing to work with those who are also broken and in need of saving. Having lived through years of abuse, she is more than capable to build trust with these children that need someone just like her to tell their stories to.
The author also brings back the butterflies from book 1 and Priya from book 2, and so we don't lose track of how those prior crime victims are faring. Yes, it is a bit quirky to be honest...these odd, twisted characters coming together time and time again in these books, and yet, somehow it feels natural and meant to be. Despite their horrific experiences together, they are still mesmerically drawn to one another. It's as if when someone sees you experiencing the worst, you have been set free - free to be real, free to struggle, free to be. There is no pretense, no more fine or just OK.
Yes, they are going to struggle and forever carry their scars, which helped shape and make them who they are. But despite their brokenness - seeing them all together, you see them as whole again. They may be battle-scarred and weary, but they are a family - a family of survivors that have formed a beautiful unit of haunted brilliant souls.
This is another compelling story with the usual cast of characters: Vic, Mercedes and Eddison. In this book, we get to know more about each of them and how they work together so well. We also get better acquainted with Sterling and find her fitting right in on the team.
I like Mercedes's character a great deal. She has suffered so much in her life, and yet, she isn't hiding from her past. She's embracing it by choosing to work with those who are also broken and in need of saving. Having lived through years of abuse, she is more than capable to build trust with these children that need someone just like her to tell their stories to.
The author also brings back the butterflies from book 1 and Priya from book 2, and so we don't lose track of how those prior crime victims are faring. Yes, it is a bit quirky to be honest...these odd, twisted characters coming together time and time again in these books, and yet, somehow it feels natural and meant to be. Despite their horrific experiences together, they are still mesmerically drawn to one another. It's as if when someone sees you experiencing the worst, you have been set free - free to be real, free to struggle, free to be. There is no pretense, no more fine or just OK.
Yes, they are going to struggle and forever carry their scars, which helped shape and make them who they are. But despite their brokenness - seeing them all together, you see them as whole again. They may be battle-scarred and weary, but they are a family - a family of survivors that have formed a beautiful unit of haunted brilliant souls.
I liked this book better than the second! It has a great but sad story just like the others but I felt like this book on Mercedes and her personal connection to why she became an FBI agent was amazingly written. Every chapter truly tugs on the heart strings and there were numerous times I stopped and thanked the universe this was fiction because MY GOD my heart couldn’t handle the things happening. Excited for the 4th book!!
The Summer Children is the third installment in Dot Hutchinson's "Collector Trilogy", though apparently the author has decided to turn it into a series with a fourth book. Cool. I wondered after The Gardener what there was left to tell and Hutchinson gave us Priya Sravasti's story, intermingled with the sour Agent Eddison who we met from the first novel and appearances from Inara and Bliss, connecting the three girls through their shared trauma. Instead of introducing yet another damaged heroine, The Summer Children explores the story of an established character, Mercedes Ramirez, an agent working with Eddison and Victor Hanoverian who was, well, present in The Butterfly Garden.
We aren't told much about her character then beyond the sad smile she gives Inara, hinting at her own trauma. The Summer Children delivered on that hint, by having Mercedes at the center of a case involving a serial killing "angel" whose murders bring to light some blood curdling abuses towards children ranging from child rape, to exposure to hard drugs, to more fucking child rape resulting in a seven year old with herpes and a pregnant twelve year old. Sexual violence isn't a new theme in Hutchinson's works, in fact I'm tempted to say it's becoming an old one. While I don't doubt the crimes featured are based on something close to reality, sometimes it feels like Hutchinson uses the subject for purposes that have as much to do with shock as they do with bringing awareness to a very serious problem that needs to be discussed.
And shock, disturb and disgust these atrocities did as my eyes genuinely watered at the depths of the depravity of some of these characters (and the knowledge it likely isn't purely fictional). While I was surprised at the gruesome nature of the horrors depicted, I was hardly astonished at the reveal of the killer as, just as in the previous novel, it was fairly obvious. Hutchinson needs to develop her "whodunnit" story lines so I can't guess the murderer from their introduction.
For all its brutality though, the story keeps its heart through the enduring bond between Mercedes, Eddison, Hanoverian, and Sterling as well as the growing one between them and Inara, Bliss and Priya. Hopefully it's that heart that fuels the next installment.
We aren't told much about her character then beyond the sad smile she gives Inara, hinting at her own trauma. The Summer Children delivered on that hint, by having Mercedes at the center of a case involving a serial killing "angel" whose murders bring to light some blood curdling abuses towards children ranging from child rape, to exposure to hard drugs, to more fucking child rape resulting in a seven year old with herpes and a pregnant twelve year old. Sexual violence isn't a new theme in Hutchinson's works, in fact I'm tempted to say it's becoming an old one. While I don't doubt the crimes featured are based on something close to reality, sometimes it feels like Hutchinson uses the subject for purposes that have as much to do with shock as they do with bringing awareness to a very serious problem that needs to be discussed.
And shock, disturb and disgust these atrocities did as my eyes genuinely watered at the depths of the depravity of some of these characters (and the knowledge it likely isn't purely fictional). While I was surprised at the gruesome nature of the horrors depicted, I was hardly astonished at the reveal of the killer as, just as in the previous novel, it was fairly obvious. Hutchinson needs to develop her "whodunnit" story lines so I can't guess the murderer from their introduction.
For all its brutality though, the story keeps its heart through the enduring bond between Mercedes, Eddison, Hanoverian, and Sterling as well as the growing one between them and Inara, Bliss and Priya. Hopefully it's that heart that fuels the next installment.
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