It’s empty in the valley of your heart. The sun, it rises slowly as you walk away from all the fears and all the faults you’ve left behind. The harvest left no food for you to eat, you cannibal, you meat-eater, you see. But I have seen the same I know the shame in your defeat. Let’s shed some light on Keepers of the Cave, by Gerri Hill.
Synopsis:
While the investigations go on in Dallas and Baton Rouge after the disappearance of a senator’s daughter, FBI agents CJ Johnston and Paige Riley are assigned to the sleepy backwoods of East Texas for a dead-end assignment to infiltrate an all-girls school.
Random disappearances dating back fifty years and more raise red flags that point to the tiny, isolated community of Hoganville. But CJ and Paige fear there will be little distraction from the memories of the one-night stand they shared six months ago.
Nevertheless, they integrate themselves into the lives of the teachers and staff, but soon the odd behavior of the townspeople has them convinced something sinister lurks there. Something, perhaps, that even the residents of Hoganville don’t know about.
Source: Goodreads
SPOILERS BELOW
Keepers of the Cave follows to FBI agents, CJ Johnston and Paige Riley, who have had a somewhat awkward work relationship ever since a drunken one-night stand a few months ago. And wouldn’t you know it, their new assignment requires them to go undercover as a couple in order to investigate an all-girls school which may be linked to a string of mystery disappearances. Will this lead to them working through their issues and ending up in a relationship for real? You know it.
But what about the case? This is no ordinary investigation, but a paranormal case worthy of The X-Files: a cult leader with magical powers is performing human sacrifices to a monstrous creature living in a cave. That sounds interesting, right? And I’m sure it would be, if the book actually devoted any time to it. But CJ and Paige are so interested in each other that they seem to forget to do any actual investigating. They don’t make any progress on the case until one of the cultists comes to them and spills the whole deal. Even then, I wouldn’t say they “solve” the case, because they end up just killing the cultists without actually figuring anything out. What is the creature in the cave? Never explained! How did the cult leader get magical powers? Never explained! Our heroes never even actually confront the monster. How do you make a book about FBI agents investigating a monster and not have the FBI agents actually fight the monster at the end?
But I know what you’re all really wondering: does this book manage to have a Dead Lesbian Penalty? What a silly question: of course it does. Pour one out for Ella, randomly shot dead by a cultist for no particular reason. She wasn’t helping the heroes, she wasn’t selected as a sacrifice for the monster; the book just decided, hey, we should kill off a lesbian, and she happened to be available.
Suffice to say, this book did not end up being to my taste. But apparently it’s the first in a series; and who knows, maybe everything will end up paying off satisfactorily in the sequel. So, I guess I have to pick that one up and find out.
Final Rating: 2/5
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