I took a bit longer to review this book as I did not want to start it without reading the first in the series. I know that some books you can just pick up but everything I have read made me feel as if it was important to start at the beginning. Detective Lex Cole and Saki Finley are working together on finding some missing kids this time around. Crisp and Gylnnie are the two teenagers whose story we follow. After being racially profiled and arrested Crisp is released and then he and Glynnie. go missing. The detectives need to put the pieces together and find them before it is too late. The racial and social topics addressed throughout the book were very needed and really brought the book together. I will be looking out and reading the next book in this series.

I struggled to make it through this book. I couldn't get hooked on it at all. There is a race issue, cop vs civilian issue, noncaring cops, socioeconomic issues, just seemed like everything but the kitchen sink was in the book but to me, it didn't blend well. Not sure what it was missing but I couldn't get into the whole book. I did receive this book as an ARC and I am giving my free and honest review.

Although I was interested in the beginning, I was not as invested as I thought when Crisp a nice black kid of mixed Russian heritage erupted into anger instead of keeping cool. Although he had good qualities going for him and was liked he acted impulsively and then it all seemed to go downhill. He was a good kid that took himself into a dangerous situation that resulted unfortunately in his arrest.

Karen Ellis returns with Lex and Elsa in tow. Lex’s own past creeps in as he works tirelessly to find two missing teens, Glynneth and Crisp,,,,the former trying to escape the expectations of her wealthy parents and the latter on his way to Princeton. Family dynamics and the past weigh heavily on them all and when Crisp is introduced to JJ, Glynn’s homeless low-level pot dealer, things get dangerous quickly, pulling Crisp into his absentee father’s old stomping grounds. While plot was brilliant it lost some edge with the introduction of a number of new characters and I was left feeling that there were still questions unanswered.

This is the second in a series, which I didn't realize. But that's OK, since it's a different story. This is a typical police procedural mystery, but with a lot of insight into the main teen characters whose stories are the focus of the mystery. I liked how the author went back and forth in the timeline of the events. This made it more interesting. I also liked reading about the different neighborhoods and streets in Brooklyn, because I live there.

Second book in this series tense chilling characters that come alive .The author brings us in to disparate neighborhoods race relations always kept me on the edge of my seat..Karen Ellis never fails.#netgalley#mullhollandbooks.

This book was not what I expected. It is a very good story of how easily one bad decision can influence your life and the lives of those around you. Karen Ellis has taken the time to develop the characters so we can feel their panic when they find themselves in some very dire circumstances. She built the back story to the point where we can see through our three teens eyes the dilemma as they try to get back home. As our hero works against odds to find the teens we feel his frustration. This is truly the mark of an excellent writer.

I received a copy of this book from netgalley in return for my honest review. This book was so good. It kept my attention and really kept me guessing!!!! I never knew what was going to happen next!!!! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good mystery!!

meh. Unrealistic portrayal of addiction. I wasn't able to get into the book, and I don't think I'll be going further with this series.

OH NO! The beginning has me super angry. This is the type of book I have been avoiding. Smacks too much of realism and I don’t need anymore than I happen to catch flipping channels on the TV or clicking on the internet.

Ugly business and I see it ruining Crisp’s life. Will it make him become a monster? We’ll see.

A portrait of a white privileged teen girl, a promising, intelligent mixed race boy and a black homeless boy and what results from their coming together.

Kind of a coming of age story …I thought it would be about race when I first began, but it turned into teens…learning about life.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Last Night by Karen Ellis.

Such a great story!! Unlike the first book, this one focuses on Lex, a detective with a good heart, but his share of problems. The story alternates between Elsa and Lex looking for a couple teenagers and the teenagers trying to stay hidden. They stumbled into a shady situation that turned south in a hurry.

Last Night kept me guessing until the very end with this great host of characters. Although Elsa is more of a cameo than main character, her appearance ties the story together.

I highly recommend this book to all mystery/thriller readers! *Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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Last Night is a weak entry into the Searchers series.
Crisp has worked hard to keep his nose clean and earn his way into an Ivy League school but he still can't overcome the racial biases of the metro cops. This event leads to a domino effect of reconnecting with a past acquaintance and sinking him into gun violence. It's his difference that brings Lex onto the case and trying to find out what happened last night.
Using racial biases is a hot topic but this manages to handle the idea without any class and just uses it as a superficial way to get into the story. It's not needed or add any depth to the topic. In fact, the majority of this story is just weak.
Following Crisp and his WASP chick friends uninteresting and superficial. Ellis treats such social issues as deportation and homelessness as a glib one off making fixing all problems with a magic wand. The novel is overly wordy with description and very little action. I almost didn't finish the book but decided to skim it instead.
Overall, Last NIght makes me not want to continue with the series and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I struggled with the first book in the series because of the graphic violence and abuse. Thankfully, this book did not have any terrible scenes of abuse, so that's an improvement. I also struggled to feel any connection to the characters in book one, and that did not change with this sequel. In fact, I struggled to connect to either the characters or the story. I never felt invested in fate of anyone, and was bored almost the entire time. Where I felt the author did a decent job in the first book of creating tension and interest, she failed completely with this book. The personal drama of the lead detective, Lex Cole, seemed contrived and unbelievable.

While I appreciate the opportunity to try new authors, I will not be seeking out additional books by this author. There are better thriller and procedural books out there.

I loved "Last Night" by Karen Ellis! This is actually the second book in 'The Searchers' series and the first book is 'A Map of the Dark' which I haven't yet read.

The author did a brilliant job with character development in this novel. The story followed Detective Lex Cole and Detective Saki Finley as they teamed up to find two teens that were last seen together. I loved the progression of the story and I really appreciated the detailed ending. Karen Ellis skilfully brought this suspenseful and thought-provoking novel to a superb and uplifting conclusion.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel, at my own request, from Mulholland Books via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

This book really blew me away and I know I will revisit its themes again and again in my mind.

Like book one in The Searchers series (please let there be more!), A Map of the Dark, Last Night is an entertaining detective story whose characters have complex inner lives. Told over the course of 5 days, Last Night moves to the next level, deeply exploring inner lives, especially those of the teenage protagonists, Crisp and Glynnie. This is one of my favorite kinds of stories, where disparate lives crash together to create compelling stories. By the end, it's clear that Crisp's and Glynnie's storylines have been inverted: where her life is controlled, comfortable, and miserable, his is much freer, challenging, and richer. Crisp is free to be himself and pursue his dreams until a chance encounter with a racist cop almost derails him completely. Glynnie has every societal advantage, yet is misunderstood, maybe unloved, by her family and ultimately pays a very high price for her emotional freedom.

This is ultimately a story of teenage kids searching for their place in the world, starting with their own families. I will be thinking about Crisp and Glynnie for a long time.

(Another reason I will now read anything Karen Ellis writes is her analysis of what Robert Moses did to the city and her shout-out to one of his nemeses, Jane Jacobs.)

Special thanks to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for providing an advance e-galley copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was the second book by Karen Ellis. I really enjoyed reading the first one, but loved this one! I felt so attached to all the characters and was hoping that everything would work out for all of them. Excellent book and a pretty quick read!

Titus “Crisp” Crespo, a biracial 19-year-old raised by his mother and Russian grandparents, is a high-achieving and responsible kid, but that doesn’t stop a New York city cop from judging him by his skin tone. The day before he is to be valedictorian for his class and mere months before he is set to go to Princeton, he’s unfairly arrested for riding his bike on the sidewalk, loses his temper, and ends up in detention, missing his own graduation.

Meanwhile Glynnie Dreyfus is white, rich, bored, and rebellious in a spoiled sort of way. She spies Crisp playing basketball in a cage at the top of the detention center, and recognizes him as someone she met once through mutual friends. When Crisp is released, he wants to impress her and swings by her house. Crisp is a basically decent individual and nice guy, and as such he somehow follows along as she makes bad choice after worse choice. The two end up missing, and that’s where NYPD detective Lex Cole comes in, a Russian cop, ex-addict, coping with a bad break-up with his boyfriend and running on sleepless nights. There’s another detective on the autism spectrum, Crisp’s very worried mother camping out at the station, the possibility that Crisp might find the father who abandoned him, Glynnie’s very stressed and ineffective parents, a Haitian child whose parents have been deported and who is in hiding, and even some personal growth. A most satisfying book.

I was offered both Last Night and A Map of the Dark (released last year) by Mulholland Books and NetGalley. These are the first two books in a series called The Searchers which follows a group of NYPD detectives. The first book concerned FBI agent Elsa Myers, a flawed individual working through her own past as she desperately searches for missing teenage girls and their abductor. It was good, a gripping story with characters that pull you in, but for me, the second book was even better. I could barely put it down. Lex Cole, who makes a few appearances in the first book, is the protagonist of this book, in which Elsa makes a few appearances. Lex is not as gripping a character as Elsa, but I found that Crisp and Glynnie more than made up for it. In fact, I found their adventures a little stressful at a few points!

In short, I am pretty happy to have found a new author producing such solid work, and I’m looking forward to the next in the series.

Driving While Black

Author Karen Ellis deals with teenagers and some of the seriously dark stuff that can happen when these vulnerable humans get in over their heads and need police help. This is NOT my "Leave It To Beaver" childhood! Well-written, covering disturbing topics compellingly, the novel has some carryover of characters from book one of the series, but this is a standalone (think individual episodes of Special Victims Unit). Of course a great many threads cross and knot together, but one of the more compelling is the casual racism still exercised against the innocent, the destructive effect of pulling THAT thread causing untold consequences.

I had a difficult time getting into this book. Indeed, I never really did. Unlike A Map of the Dark, this book simply didn't grip

Last Night by Karen Ellis is a tale of two teens who get more than they bargain for when they wander off for the night in search of some weed. Titus Crispo and Glynnie cannot be more opposite if they tried. Titus is half black/ half white and a stellar student. He is on the verge of graduating high school as Valedictorian and has a free ride to Princeton. Glynnie is a quintessential rebellious teen who doesn’t care about school or anything else really. Glynnie is white and comes from a well off family. These two unlikely friends bond one afternoon over Titus’s recent brush with the cops. Glynnie decides they need to blow off some steam, and she hauls Titus along to find her dealer, and so begins the longest night of their young lives.

Alarms are quickly sounded late into the night by both families when neither child returns home all night. The missing persons cases fall into two different precincts. The lead investigators soon connect the two missing kids to each other. Matters only become more complicated when a rattled Glynnie returns home, spouting a tale of a run in with a shady street weapons dealer and the kidnapping of Titus Crespo. Last Night is both a mystery and a redemption story as each of the characters is seeking something that is currently missing in their lives, and their difficult journey through one terrible night paved the way for each of them to grow and learn something new about themselves. This is a short read, but it didn’t feel incomplete or lacking, and everyone has a resolution. A worthwhile read. This is the second novel I have read of Karen Ellis and she has proven to be a strong force in mystery writing.