The Garden Girls by Jessica R. Patch

The Garden Girls by Jessica R. Patch
Series: FBI: Strange Crimes Unit book 3
Publisher: Love Inspired Trade (April 23, 2024)

REVIEW BY PRISCILLA BETTIS

Tiberius Granger is an FBI agent in the Strange Crimes Unit. The Unit investigates crimes with a religious nature–think cults, abusive megalomaniac preachers, stuff like that. Despite knowing the Bible and other religious texts forwards and backwards, Tiberius is an atheist.

You see, Tiberius grew up in a cult himself, so he has walls up, and it’ll take extraordinary circumstances to break them down:

Ty knew firsthand about warped religious views; he’d been born into a cult and was thankful every day he’d left. Religions boiled down to two things–money and power. Dark purposes and greedy gain. Grubby paws that swiped at the objects they lusted over.
-Jessica R. Patch, The Garden Girls

Through Tiberius, readers see how manipulative erroneous (or just plain sinful) leaders can be and still have their flocks believe everything is GOOD.

The Garden Girls story is not for overly sensitive readers. Tiberius and his team are tracking a serial killer who keeps his victims bound in a disturbing way until he kills them. The actual violence is either off the page or briefly glossed over, but the aftermath is so intense it’s as if everything were laid bare on the page. I was left at the end of some chapters in a heap on the couch with something akin to the Emergency Broadcast System screeching in my ears.

And didn’t anybody notice Tiberius’ colleague’s name? Violet. Like the book description says, the serial killer is targeting women with flower names. “Watch out, Violet!” I screamed in my head. “Watch out, watch out, watch out!”

There were many passages I highlighted because I was in awe of Patch’s ability to bring fresh descriptions of characters’ reactions during highly emotional scenes. (Basically, I mean that Patch sure does know how to “show don’t tell.”) Readers who are also writers will find her prose inspiring.

Patch drops a big surprise on the reader in the first third of the book. Then, when I thought the rest of the book was going to be a straightforward cat-and-mouse game with a clear suspect for the FBI to track down, there was another huge surprise. And THEN, when I was all settled back into the story, there was ANOTHER momentous surprise. It all made for a super fun read, kudos to Patch.

Overall, The Garden Girls is an excellent psychological thriller with a strong Christian message and a clear warning to know the Scriptures yourself so you can’t be manipulated. Five thrilling fish!

I purchased an ebook of The Garden Girls from Amazon.