Edge of your seat, heart racing suspense!

Have you read the Lilah Love Series by Lisa Renee Jones? If you have you're going to want to dive into this one as well. This series starts off with Detective Samantha Jazz being assigned a case to find a serial killer after the Detective that was on the case suddenly relocates to a different town. Sam has a special skill set that makes her perfect for this case, she knows her Poetry better than anyone else on the force.

There is a killer on the loose and he's leaving a calling card, A poem inside of the victims mouth. What does it mean? Is there a connection between the victims? Who is the killer? And more importantly what does he want with Detective Jazz?

Normally I like my books steamy, actually the steamer the better but I have to say I didn’t miss it at all in this book. I was so engrossed in trying to figure out who The Poet was along with Detective Samantha Jazz that I didn’t want to put the book down, actually my kindle died on me which was the only way I was going to stop reading for the night.

I will admit that the prologue did help a bit with figuring out who the killer was but since we didn't have a name to go on we could only put the clues together.

I really enjoyed this book and I hope to see more of Detective Jazz in the future.

If you enjoy Mystery Suspense Reads you're going to want to grab this one.

Happy Reading!!!

It was a book that left me guessing till the end. The characters didn't stand out from 9ther las enforcement novels

He watches her from afar, the master teaching the student. Sometimes he punishes her, other times her rewards her, all the time he tortures her.

The Poet leaves them naked and bound with poetry shoved in their mouths. A gift to Detective Jazz, a special message just for her.
The Poet is a serial killer obsessed with Jazz and as the bodies pile up, she begins to see, how deep this obsession goes.

The Poet is deeply disturbing, and a total mind game, that makes your head spin. The Passages written in the Poets point of view are creepy and deranged. Every chapter I was unsure who the poet was. This one held its secrets until the end.

Detective Jazz is a badass female lead that is strong and unfortunately emotionally charged. She lets her emotions get the best of her in some situations and her stupidity as a detective pissed me off. The writer made me want to yell at her and there were time I was mumbling stuff to myself.

If you are a mystery, thrillers, psychological thrillers, and police procedurals lover you need to read this!! It combines them all into a disturbing story that will keep you on the edge of your seat guessing until the last moment!

I actually enjoyed this book a lot, but the ending was unconvincing for me, so it dropped from 4 stars to 3. Good characterization, good suspense, and complex plotting--up until the very end, where it kind of fell apart for me.

Review copy provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

5+ Stars

I was completely blown away by this exciting, twisty, heart racing suspense thriller that I could not put down. The writing was perfectly executed and flowed beautifully and with characters that were flawed but fascinating to read about. This is an excellent read.

I really enjoyed the character of Detective Samantha Jazz who is assigned to some really unusual murders that she soon realises has far more links to her than she feels comfortable with. Detective Jazz is a force to be reckoned with, such a determined young woman, complex, and troubled. This made her even more interesting to read about because, as I read along, more and more layers of Samantha Jazz were peeled back and I really admired the cop that she was. Along with her sidekicks Wade and Lang they take us on a fast-paced ride and a bumpy one at that to hunt down the killer and try to stop him before he kills again.

This author took me on one hell of a ride and kept me guessing right until the end. Just when I thought I might have guessed who the killer was I was taken down another path which had me questioning everything I thought I had worked out. So very clever. This book left me breathless with anticipation. Absolutely amazing.

I did enjoy reading The Poet for the most part. What I had a hard time getting past was the main character Detective Samantha Jazz and her overinflated ego. I just did not care for her or her thought processes. How she is right and everyone else is wrong. I found the other characters in this story to be likable and humorous.

Another heart stopping sexy romance thriller by Lisa Renee Jones.

Samantha Jazz is a detective with the Austin PD and she has just come back to work after witnessing the death of her father another policeman on the force and who she had found out just before his death that he was involved in corruption within the Austin PD. Her first case back to work is a killer dubbed, The Poet and she has been put on the case because he has a love for poetry... But this case is putting her in danger and two men in her life are trying to keep her safe, her partner in the force, Ethan Lang and a former lover, Wade Miller who is with the FBI..

As she delves into the case more, she knows she is being watched by the killer and he is killing people she knows and people who have a taste for poetry and the clues are building up to the killer, but the more she gets closer to him, the more he is one step ahead of her and leaving messages with poet’s words that she knows and loves.

Can she find this killer before another person dies or she herself is put in peril...?

This book is classic Lisa Renee Jones, she gives us a kickass heroine, who knows her own mind and will do anything she can to be at her best, and as she does her job more than 100%, she also loves just as hard and when she had to make choices, she always way her options on who she takes a chance on. Will it be her partner on the Force, Ethan, who daily tries to get on her last nerve, or will it be FBI Agent Wade Miller, who she was had a relationship with and who has come back into her life with this new case, and wants her to work for the FBI. This book will have you turning the pages with baited breath waiting to see who is going to come after Detective Samantha Jazz next, will it be the killer or will it be her future...

Thank you to Netgalley and Entangled Publishing for the ARC of this great read.

The Poet, by Lisa Renee Jones

Short Take: Like a porn with no nudity.

Duckies, the weather is gross, this book was dumb, and I am over EVERYTHING. I’ve spent almost two weeks trying to read this thing, and I finally decided to just power through & hope it would redeem itself in the end, but it didn’t. The only good thing about having so little payoff is that there wasn’t much buildup either.

In The Poet, Detective Samantha Jazz (and I just can’t with that name, good grief) is hunting a serial killer with a fixation on poetry. She’s joined by her muscle-bound partner Lang and her occasional boyfriend FBI agent Wade. Sam is also haunted by memories of her father, a crooked cop who was shot right in front of her.

Seem overly simple? It is. This book does not deserve the nearly 400 pages it has. Sam could have been an interesting character, but the author’s biggest mistake was writing Sam’s chapters in the first person. Because despite the thousands and thousands of words devoted to Sam’s thoughts, we never get a sense of her feelings. It’s page after page of what she does, and occasionally what she thinks, but never ever what she feels.

Sam and her partner flirt with each other a lot. Does she find him attractive? We don’t know, she never says. She loved her father, and stopped idolizing him when she figured out he was corrupt, but did she grieve when he died? Does she miss fun things they did together, is she still angry with him? No clue. (I should note that this book takes place about 3 months after her father’s death, it’s not exactly the distant past). It makes it impossible to engage with the character, to feel much of anything with or for her. To quote someone who shows about the same level of emotion - I really don’t care, do u?

Samantha is also unlikable and not in a fun way. She’s a woman cop, daughter of a disgraced cop, and that obviously comes with a truckload of baggage in the police department. Sam’s way of dealing with this seems to be to be pushy and rude to anyone she encounters. It would be understandable and even interesting if we saw a bit of the insecurity that usually underlies behavior like that, but nope. She just is one of those people who insists they are always right and refuses to hear anything to the contrary, but Ms. Jones lets her always be right. She’s an expert on poetry and profiling and some kind of semi-psychic who can actually SENSE EVIL and whatever else she needs to be or do at the moment.

I’ve mentioned a few dozen times before how boring perfection is in a character, right?

Oh yeah, and we’re told explicitly (and apropos of absolutely nothing) that Sam TOTALLY HATES overweight and out of shape cops. It’s definitely not in a body-shaming way though, you guys! But lest we all think she’s just some soulless basic pretty white girl who is grossed out by fat coworkers and uses the word “cute” to describe real estate (she is and she does), we’re told approximately 47 times that she really likes chocolate. She’s just like us, y’all!!

A bad good guy in a book could probably be sufficiently offset by a good bad guy, but we don’t get that either. The chapters from the killer’s POV are cheesy and lame. He’s a bad stereotype, a Hannibal Lecter ordered from Wish. Super genius, super rich and handsome and married with a wife and kids who don’t suspect a thing because although his obsession is uncontrollable, he can easily control it around them.

On the plus side, the chapters are super short, otherwise, it might have been even more of a slog.

The Nerd’s Rating: TWO HAPPY NEURONS (and does anyone have a recipe for a vodka and snow cocktail? This crap has to be good for something other than “cold, wet, and miserable”.)

The synopsis for the book caught my attention and does describe the storyline, but It didn’t hold my attention like I was hoping it would. It tends to be more of a police procedural rather than a a thriller, which isn’t a bad thing, but I think what detracted from my enjoyment was the characterization. I found the lead detective annoying and unprofessional at times. She’s supposed to be one of the best detectives in the police department and yet she fixates on a suspect and almost becomes a stalker.

The book is well written and does have a good storyline. Everyone’s taste in books is different and many people will really enjoy reading this. Unfortunately it just missed the mark for me.

A Texas serial killer is stuffing poetry into his victim’s mouths. The poems taunt the female detective, Samantha Jazz, who had a major in poetry but can’t quite figure out who the killer is. It’s clear that she’s the only one who matters, but it’s a race against time to go back in her history, including her grandfather, to put the pieces together. Which of course she does, but only after a few more deaths. Very well written, and a true puzzle.A Texas serial killer is stuffing poetry into his victim’s mouths. The poems taunt the female detective, Samantha Jazz, who had a major in poetry but can’t quite figure out who the killer is. It’s clear that she’s the only one who matters, but it’s a race against time to go back in her history, including her grandfather, to put the pieces together. Which of course she does, but only after a few more deaths. Very well written, and a true puzzle.

The Poet was a slow read for me. Not sure what it was but I really couldn’t connect with the main characters. It starts off with a murder in a bookshop so right up my alley. A serial killer with a love of poetry and an obsession with the lead Detective.

It felt like the police were so focused on one suspect for most of the book. The ending was ok but it wasn’t a book that I would want to read a sequel to.

Thanks to NetGalley and Entangled Publishing for my copy of this book to read.

It is always encouraging to see authors take moment and do something out their usual. The Poet by Lisa Renee Jones is one of those books. Lisa Renee Jones is a very successful romance author and to have her take on a book that is a bit police procedural, part mystery/thriller is encouraging.

The book works on many levels and is a strong effort.

I don't usually read American authors but this was a knee jerk kind of reading. It starts out with the main clue to who the poet was or is, you can read it and keep it in mind when you find him or her. There's a lot of going back to know who the characters are in this story. But! Detective Samantha Jazz is our main character along with Detective Ethan Langford for half of the book. Evil takes its self in different forms to Samantha and she knows this. You'll find the story captivating and turning corners with an ever increasing need for poetry to figure out who's the killer. I believe Lisa Renee does an extraordinary job of putting the right people in place at the right time in explaining her story. It leaves us with a whodunit with a kind of noir ending. Read it.

There are some really good reviews of this book, and other folks may have gotten more into the characters and story than I could. I felt very disconnected from everything in this book and by the end when the killer was revealed, I didn't really care and was just happy to have finally finished it. I found myself bored reading this book and the pace very slow. This was mostly a police procedural book, although there were a few times things just didn't make sense to me.

Overall, this book never really captured my interest and I was left feeling disappointed at the ending.

I requested this book immediately after reading the blurb. It is much more of a police procedural (not my jam) than a serial killer thriller. Another issue I had was it just moved so slow. I am a fan of books that grab me right away and this was a slow burn. I struggled to connect with the characters and found much of it to be confusing. I really detest writing bad reviews because I feel like it could be a case of wrong book, wrong time.
Thanks to Netgalley and Entangled Publishing for this arc.

I'm not a fan to thrillers/crime fiction. This book was my adventure, and it turned out far better than I expected. Amazing! Simply amazing. That's what it is; a page turner. Something you wouldn't be able to put down once you started reading. The story, the characters, the premise, and all the twists and turns will keep hooked until the very end. I highly recommend this book. It's a must-read mystery/suspense novel.
They're calling him 'The Poet.' But that's not all he is. He is a master in search of an apprentice. He has a destiny, and he is going to do anything to fulfill the task he has been given. Right now, he is fixated on Detective Jazz. She doesn't know it yet, but everything he is doing, he is doing it for her benefit. She will learn soon.
It's a very well-written crime fiction. A story about a serial killer and a detective. How their lives are connected and where is this leading? The answers might not be what you expect, but they will definitely keep you entertained. I loved every second of this story.

Creepy 'who done it' So fun be kept on my toes. I loved being scared, and was kept entertained up to the end.

Enjoyable serial killer mystery. The story was captivating. The writing flowed. The author definitely knew the material they were writing about. The only reason I am giving the book 3 stars is because the mystery of who the poet is isn’t a twisty gag worthy reveal. Readers familiar with thrillers can figure out the poet quite quickly. Thank you for a review copy NetGalley and I can’t wait to see what the author writes next.

Being that this is a murder mystery/thriller only it was ok. I can tell Lisa did her research and getting into the killers head...she really did a good job. Sadly I think we can all guess the killer from the prologue. It just wasn't surprising at all. I'll still check out Lisa's work. I LOVE this cover!

I received this book at my request and have voluntarily left this unbiased review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Thank you NetGalley and Entangled Publishing, LLC for an advanced copy of this book. The comments and review are my honest opinion.
A detective with a penchant for poetry instilled by her loving grandfather is tasked to find a serial killer who leaves poems in the mouth of his victims. Detective Samantha Jazz fixates on a person of interest and what follows is a taunt police procedural thriller. I would have liked to see more buildup given to the killer at the end, but over all this was a decent book.