Cold as Hell

The heroine makes some uncharacteristically selfish and inconsiderate decisions in last 20%.

I am listening to this for the second time in preparation for the next book in the series and while the story as a whole is very good and I wouldn’t have mentioned this when I first listened to the book right after it came out it has been a year and I find this part so freaking frustrating. I get that Casey is independent and often considers others well being before her own and is in denial about aspects of her pregnancy related to labor but even so it comes across as very inconsiderate that once Casey realizes she is actually in labor that she would put the investigation in jeopardy and risk everyone’s wellbeing by neglecting to tell anyone she is in active labor. I get that she is worried about the potential victim they are searching for and it could be blamed on “pregnancy brain” but it still seems out of character that she would put the entire search party at risk by allowing them to think she is on equal footing with them. She is not. She is a liability. The team needs to be focused on finding their missing resident and in her Misguided attempt at searching for them she is inevitably going to take the focus off the primary objective. The group does NOT need their attention divided and by not telling anyone she is getting ready to pop she is causing another crisis. They do not need to be worried about her giving birth in the forest while they are searching for someone. Worse, they are unaware of this added crisis. It just seemed out of character that Casey wouldn’t recognize the position she was putting everyone in. They don’t need to be worried about her while they are out searching for the latest victim and the killer. Hell, they don’t even know they are in the midst of a second medical emergency. I get that in doing this it created a better climax for the book but realistically I think Casey would have given in and told someone what was going on so she could return to town and not become both a burden and a hindrance to the investigation. Throughout the book it focuses on Casey’s growth in recognizing when she needed help and being able to ask for it. Then suddenly in the last 10% of the story she suddenly regresses and becomes so stubborn and selfish in her need to be the one to “save the victim” that she puts not only herself and baby at risk but everyone involved. It just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. While the book is absolutely worth a listen be prepared for her character development and evolution as a person to completely devolve purely to add an extra level of excitement to the end of the book. I think this could have been handled differently and in such a way that it didn’t make the reader want to strangle the protagonist and still allow for an exciting conclusion to the story that didn’t cause the heroine to backtrack on all the progress she has made as a person. It also just seemed out of character for her to be so self absorbed and inconsiderate of others safety.