The Dancing Girls by M. M. Chouinard @m_m_chouinard @bookouture

It’s with absolute pleasure that I share my review for The Dancing Girls by M. M. Chouinard today as part of the blog tour. Thanks to Noelle at Bookouture for the opportunity and the review copy via NetGalley.

About the book

The light in her wide brown eyes dimmed as she drew her last breath. She might have been beautiful lying there on the floor, if it wasn’t for the purple marks on her neck and the angry red line on her finger where her wedding band used to be…

When Jeanine Hammond is found dead in a hotel in the picture-perfect town of Oakhust, newly-promoted Detective Jo Fournier is thrown into a disturbing case. Who would murder this shy, loving wife and leave her body posed like a ballerina?

Jo wants to know why Jeanine’s husband is so controlling about money, and where Jeanine’s wedding ring is, but before she and her team can get close to the truth, another woman is found strangled in a hotel, arms placed gracefully above her head like a dancer.

While digging through old case files, Jo makes a terrifying link to a series of cold cases: each victim bears the same strangulation marks. But the FBI won’t take Jo seriously, and if she disobeys direct orders by investigating the killings outside of her jurisdiction, it will mean the end of the career she’s already sacrificed so much for, even her relationship.

Just as Jo is beginning to lose hope, she finds messages on the victims’ computers that make her question whether these small-town women were hiding big lies. Jo thinks this is the missing link between the victims, but she knows the killer is moments away from selecting his next victim. Will it lead her to the most twisted killer of her career in time, or will another innocent life be lost?

The Dancing Girls is available to purchase now – Amazon

My thoughts

The Dancing Girls introduces us to Detective Jo Fournier in the start of a brand new series and what a start it is.

When the body of a woman is found in a hotel room, strangled, Jo and her team are stumped. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the killing, the victim Jeanine was a married woman, her husband and friends don’t believe she would have an affair, she had no enemies so why was she found strangled, positioned like a ballerina and her wedding ring taken?

Told from multiple points of view we not only hear from Jo as she tries to figure it all out but we get to hear from the killer as he selects his victims and we hear from the victims themselves as we find out how they end up coming in contact with the killer. This I found really intriguing, it really drew me in to the story making me feel like I knew the characters but it also filled me with dread, it was like I was getting to know the victim, I had sympathy for them but I knew what was coming and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

The killer in this story seriously gave me the chills, he’s a sick and twisted man with a very troublesome background. I didn’t in the slightest feel any sympathy for him but I could sort of see how he became so troubled. I suppose I felt sorry for the boy he was and what he went through but certainly not for the man he became.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it was a story that kept me intrigued from beginning to end and also kept me on my toes as well. I felt terribly frustrated for Jo as she really wanted to crack this case, I knew who the killer was but couldn’t help her at all.

The Dancing Girls really is a cracking start to a new series featuring Jo and I enjoyed it immensely but I would have liked to have heard more from Jo, gotten to know her a bit better but it’s exciting to see where her character will go and how much more we’ll find out about her in the next book. Hopefully we won’t have too long to wait.

So yes I’ll definitely be recommending The Dancing Girls, it’s a thrilling and engrossing read that I managed to devour in a few hours and has me excited for book two.

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About the author

M.M. Chouinard’s first fiction story was published in her local paper when she was eight, and she fell in love with Agatha Christie novels not long after. While pursuing a Ph.D in psychology and helping to found the first U.S. research university of the new millenium, the stories kept rattling around inside her skull, demanding to come out. For sanity’s sake, she released them. She’s currently at work on her seventh novel.

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