The book begins with the main character, Freya Sinclair returning to her home town and resuming a position with the Fawn Lake Police Department as Captain.

Throughout the book there are hints towards Freya’s traumatic past and her strained relationship with her parents. However, the details of this are not explained any further. I’m hoping that the subsequent books in this series provide the reader with some clarity regarding Freya’s family dynamics.

As for the story of the three drowned girls, it was very captivating yet a bit unbelievable. I would categorize the ending as a psychological thriller with a cult-like theme.
I listened to this book in just 2 days and it definitely kept my attention.

Overall I enjoyed the characters in this book and will look out for the next books in this series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC in exchange for an honest review of this book.

Three Drowned Girls by Emily Shiner. This book was such a crazy ride. From one page to the next, you never know what is going to happen. I had a HUGE to do list and this book helped me get through it. I moved right along my to do list because I did not want to stop listening to this book! The narrator was amazing. The book was full of twists until the last page.

Three drowned girls by Emily shiner

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for this amazing Arc! I was smitten from the beginning!

Captain Freya Sinclair is coming back home and not to the warm welcome one would hope for. After surviving her dark past in her home town of Fawn lake North Carolina.
She is returning to her old job as a detective at her old precinct, but carrying the weight of her past with her.

With recent reports of missing girls Freya has a new hurdle to prove herself to her community and also bring justice to the unknown horrors that have imbedded themselves in her quaint little town.

This story was captivating and intense on all levels as you follow the animosity that Freya has to overcome in her judgmental small town all while doing her job and taking the higher ground! I loved this book! Bring on the next one!

Thanks to #NetGalley and #BookoutureAudio for the book #ThreeDrownedGirls by #EmilyShiner. This is the first book in a new series and it is really, really good. I was drawn into this book and couldn’t stop. Freya has just returned to town after a tramatic event years ago. Her first case is a drowned girl. As she digs into this case she find more disturbing occurrences. Who is doing this to these little girls?

Freya has not had an easy life. Growing up in a small town where everyone knew everything about everyone else, except for one big secret. Freya returns to town after 5 years away and based on who her parents were and her one terrible mistake she is not anticipating a warm welcome home. She became a detective to hunt down and protect people from the likes of her serial killer parents. Hoping to slowly reintegrate into life in Fawn Lake, things immediately take a turn when a yang girl is found dead. Where will this go? Using her innate and learned skills along with her very small team she investigates and gets a lot of push back from the very man who hired her. As things continue to get worse, she keeps digging. Its a twisted, really messed up situation that is dark, horrific, hard to imagine, yet not as psychopaths live and hide amongst us all. I really like Freya and how she has learned to move forward from her own terrible childhood, stands up for herself, her team and wants only to make her town a safe place to be. I am looking forward to the next in the series. The narration was enjoyable and added to the experience of the story. .

As soon as Detective Freya Sinclair returns to her hometown, a young girl is pulled from a river. The problem is- no one reported a missing girl. As Freya works to figure out who the girl is, she discovers that there are more missing girls. But no one is talking. She frantically tries to figure it all out before more girls go missing.

This is book one in a new series- except it doesn't feel like book one at all. If feels like I picked up a book mid-series. Freya's notorious in her hometown, but you get very few details. It is mentioned, but not explained. You get some of the information in the very last chapter. I found this extremely annoying.

This is a police procedural, so one would expect a lot of the book to be about the investigation. And it is. The problem is that the policework is terrible. A regular person would do a better job than the police force did. Showing victim photos to random people, traipsing around in the woods looking for things WITHOUT EVIDENCE BAGS, etc... Anyone who has ever watched TV would cringe at some of the detective work here.

The audiobook is narrated by Amelia Sciandra. And I hated it. I am not sure how much is the writing and how much is the narrator, but it is pretty bad. Plus the narrator in dialogue can be painful.

This wasn't terrible- I know my comments may sound that way. I actually enjoyed the real plot. It was the other things that made the book very "meh" despite an interesting plot.

I received an advance audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

I went back and forth on how to rate this book. So I sat on it a bit and landed on 3 stars. Overall I did like it. I think part of where I struggled was that I listened to it and was not a fan of the narrator. I would have probably gotten a whole different feel from the book if I had read it myself. Looking at the context of it overall I think it was a good book. The twist of who it was and why I was not expecting. It wasn't your normal serial killer type book and I liked that. I think I was let down a little as the description of the book explained more about the main characters backstory than the book actual did until very end. So I felt like that was either a spoiler or just something let was left hanging that I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be something unknown and I question while reading or if I was supposed to know. I felt like that sort of ruined it a bit for me as I was expecting more about that. Overall it intrigued me to continue on and read the next one!

Emily Shiner does it again and cannot wait to read more in the series. Emily Shiner is just an absolute genius and i love her writing.

There is alot going on in this book but that is what makes it good! This is a great gripping crime series and it just keeps you engaged from page 1.

I love the fact that there are little things in the the books and clues dropped about Freya's parents and life and i hope this is a clue that this will be included more in the series going forward because i would love to know about her childhood. I cannot wait for more from Emily and more from this series.

Great Writing thanks so much for another great book!

Thanks NetGalley and Emily Shiner for letting me read and review.

Wow what a start. The very first paragraph of the story is just harrowing.

I really enjoyed this book, it was gripping from the very first page. The main character Freya comes with a complex back story and I found her really likeable and the supporting characters equally so.

I thought the premise of the book was intriguing and went in a completely different direction than I’d imagined. it was well written and seems like a great start to a new female led detective series but you could easily read this as a standalone. I will definitely be picking up the next one.

Thank you so much Bookouture Audio & Emily Shiner for this gripping read.

I am totally obsessed with this series and after it finished I immediately requested the second.

From the very first chapter Shiner had a hold over me because of the way she wrote a protagonist I just cared so much about and a chilling case that I had to keep listening to until I found out who was responsible.

The case itself was just horrific and the author did an great job at approaching the topic without being too full on. There were so many secrets to be discovered and the author slowly unravels the mystery while creating suspense until the moment the truth comes out.

This is a brilliant mystery/police procedural that had all the culty vibes in a small town with secrets and so much history that it all felt so real.

The narrator was perfect for the role and I couldn't love her narration more. Holding out for the second book now because I need the next installation ASAP!

4.5/5

I enjoyed this police procedural and look forward to the second in this new series. The core characters are well drawn, balance each other and have hidden parts, some revealed in this book, others left for future stories. Freya is returning to her home town with an obvious past with her parents and policing and I like that it is slowly revealed. I also enjoyed the connection between Freya and Esther. The relationship of Freya and the police chief didn’t ring as authentic to me, but the mystery of the drowned girl had plenty of suspects and red herrings. The narrator’s voicing made it easy to know which character was speaking. Recommended.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a review audiobook. All opinions expressed are my own.

Three Drowned Girls
By: Emily Shiner

Detective Freya Sinclair’s parents were serial killers and she is determined to put monsters like her parents away.

When she returns home as an adult little girls are missing. Everyone is suspicious of her after all her parents were killers.

Freya is out to find who killed these girls. I had no idea how twisted this one would get! How do we evert really know our neighbors!

3.5, I will definitely be reading the sequel to this crime thriller. When a serial killers daughter returns to a small town as a cop bodies begin to drop and small children go missing. Can she break the case, will the town accept her homecoming?

3.5 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley, Bookoutore, and Emily Shiner for my ARC audiobook.

TW: child loss, child abuse

Captain Freya Sinclair has returned home and is back solving cases. Her first day back on the job she is thrown into the discovery of a young girl's body. The investigation soon leads to other bodies and several missing young girls. Freya and her team must move quickly to solve this horrendous mystery before more girls are killed.

The narration was great 4/5 🌟
Loved the character building - would love to hear more Freya Sinclair murder mysteries and learn more of her back story.
The ending was a little unexpected and not my favorite. I was okay with the direction it went just wish it had built more into it, it seemed sort of out of left field.

Wow this high quality first in a series crime series left me hungry for more. The characters were well developed and the dialogue matched them. I loved ed the drip feeding of the past of the main character related yo the main story.
It was action pacted full of tension. It covered complex scsry issues such as religion, child abuse and put them in a .modern setting. Once the pieces fitted together it seemed to be over like youd ecpect in real life. I loved the way thd reactions were talked about snd the way it showed the police are people too and domeyimes its hatd to do a difficult job.. it had some very powerful nessages such as you are not responsible for other peoples mistakes.
Highly recommended tgank you gor this 5 star listen. The narrator was perfect

I enjoyed the audio book. The narrator did a wonderful job using different voices to portray the different characters. The overall story was ok. I liked the main character, however, I have a hard time wrapping my head around an unbelievable plot. I just don’t understand how, in a small town, mothers would act the way they did.

Detective Freya Sinclair has returned to her hometown after 5 years. On that same day the body of a little girl is discovered, drowned. She discovers numerous girls have gone missing but not reported. She races to uncover what is happening to those girls before there is another victim.

Wow! This book was Unputdownable. The characters were likable and relatable. I’m looking forward to hearing more of what went down with her parents. I am moving into the next book as we speak.

What a busy first day for Captain Freya at her hometown police department! A small quiet town suddenly has multiple reports of missing girls and drownings. At first it seems obvious that the girls reported missing would coincide with the girls found in the lake, but nothing is adding up.

I was enjoying most of the book, but 2 things pulled down the rating for me:
1. I was expecting more background information about Freya’s serial killer parents which was included in the synopsis. In reality, that wasn’t brought up until the 95% mark. The synopsis made it seem like it would be woven into the story telling, maybe past and present POVs-but this was not the case.
2. The reveal was hard to accept. If I take it solely on entertainment value, then it was fine/okay, but there’s no way the community and media would just be “meh” about girls being found dead and even more missing. And then as far as the person who was doing it…Someone would have said something. There’s no way everyone would pretend the way they did. It’s like it wanted to give cult feels, but it wasn’t strong enough to support that angle.

The writing was good. It had good flow. The narration was okay. I disliked the chief’s voice.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for providing this ARC. This review is being shared on NetGalley and Goodreads.

Pub Date 22 Apr 2024

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for advanced access to the audio book, in exchange for my honest review.

Three Drowned Girls is a debut novel in the Detective Freya Sinclair series by Emily Shiner. Detective Freya returns home after being gone 5 years. She's given her old job back, and on day 1 there is a major case. A young girl was pulled out of a river. The story follows Freya trying to solve the case of the missing/murdered girls.
One thing I loved about this book was the relationship between Freya and the other characters.

I'm looking forward to reading other books in this series. You get a little glimpse of what's to come in the 2nd book.
Expected publication date is April 22, 2024.

This is the first novel I’ve read of the authors and very much looking forward to exploring others!

I am weak for series. I have a feeling this is going to be a good one! Captain Freya returns to her hometown after leaving five years prior. Not the best homecoming considering her parents are serial killers.

The novel teases Freya’s background here and there leaving me to need more details, however, how this novel ends allows it to be teed up for a sequel.

Great pace and audiobook narration. This book would be a good fit for those who enjoy Megan Miranda!

Thank you Bookouture Audio for this ARC!