Customer Reviews

Lost Girls (Sherry Moore, Book 3)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really liked this one. I had been so disappointed by Last Breath - so I was afraid to even try it. The story was really interesting. The background info about Haiti and the corruption and crime there was fascinating. The plot regarding the kidnapped girls for the sex trade was very well written. Funny though, Sherry was really not the focus of the book and that was fine with me. That worked though for the story. I was intrigued reading what happened to Jill, a rich girl kidnapped from the Caribbean and locked in the dungeon of a castle in Haiti and about Alexksandra and her toughness to survive. The description of torture and inhumanity was sickening. All in all, this was a great story. I really had no idea of the scope of the torture and the plight of the victimized women. I'm all but certain that this exists today and would wish to know more about what I could do. I highly recommend the book!!

Our blind heroine's adventure allows us to see horrific events that are unseen by most of the world. Unless a victim is close to you. A masterful job of combining a thriller with a vital issue, human trafficking. Great bad guys. A good Polish cop. Will we see more of her? The author has created an intersting situation. His heroine is not crucial to a lot of the action, but is our "eyes" to all sorts of stuff. Good job.

Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. It is the first book I have read by this author but it isn't the last. The pace was super fast and the suspense high. Sherry Moore is a blind young woman who can see the last thoughts of the dead by holding their hand. She is brought to a dead mountain climber who is hanging off the side of Mt. McKinley to find out where the rest of his team is. Along with this information she glimpses a world that haunts her long afterwards. She "sees" young women in cages and being tortured by men involved in human trafficking.

We, the readers, are introduced to a couple of these young women and see the hell they go through while in captivity. What made this more horrific for me was knowing this really goes on. How anybody could be so ruthless and cruel is beyond my understanding.

Sherry is brought back into this world when a policeman witnesses the body of a missing girl falling from an airplane. I don't want to give too much of the plot away but I will say Sherry enters a world full of danger and corruption and pure evil. I was reading at breakneck speed until I finished the book. It was totally satisfying.

This is the 3rd book of the Sherry Moore series and the 3rd one I have read. I keep writing reviews that point out the book's deficiencies but rate the books pretty high. Hmmm.... This book had the same problems as the first 18 Seconds and the second Last Breath, which includes a plethora of characters, underdeveloped characters, and too little page time for the protagagonist, Sherry Moore.

On top of those deficiencies are a couple of plot twists, that while exciting are totally unbelievable. The one of these that I will mention is having Moore, our blind protaganist who has never climbed before in her life, fly from Philadelpia to Alaska in very few hours to go mountain climbing on Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), one of the world's most challenging mountains to climb because of weather and altitude, with a team of Super Navy SEALS. It would have worked just as well, and probably better, to pick a much smaller mountain that was a more believable climb (still highly unlikely but a little more believable).

But for all its failings, I enjoyed this book. I thought it was the best of the series to date. Shuman writes about the human trafficking and sex slave trade like he really knows what he's talking about.

WARNING: There are extended sections in this book that concern rape, torture and are VERY graphic.

Shuman did flesh out some his characters in this book including Sherry Moore (hey, possible love interest this time) and Admiral Brigham. I thought his characters of Aleksandra, Jill Bishop, Carol Bishop, Rolly King George, and Tam-Tam Boy were very well drawn. Shuman has a real talent, also, for coming up with some extra nasty bad guys - in this case a monster called Jean Bedard.

I will be reading the 4th book in the series Second Sight and I hope Shuman continues to improve. I think he is a great writer; he just tries to put too much into one book at the expense of the parts that he's done really well.

'Lost Girls' is a hard look at human trafficking, sex tourism, voodoo, and slavery. What it is not is what it says on the cover - it's not a Sherry Moore novel.

It's a serious subject that George Shuman tackles in 'Lost Girls,' and a subject worth looking at. It's modern-day slavery at its absolute worst and something that is largely ignored today. It is a sad and shameful truth of the modern world, that the buying and selling of women as property goes on unpunished. It's a tale worth telling well, in a way that makes people pay attention, and nothing does that better that a viewpoint we can understand and sympathize with. In Sherry Moore, we should have had one ready made.

Sherry Moore - the blind woman who can touch the dead and see the final 18 seconds of their lives, the featured character we've come to know through two good stories so far. We've come to know her and understand her unique situation and to feel for her. I've come to expect good stories from her.

In 'Lost Girls,' however, Sherry is barely in the first 100 pages of story (almost half the book), and still isn't the focus in the latter half. I would have liked to see a lot more of her in this story. Told through her eyes, this could have been even more harrowing, frightening, and shocking. Instead, what we have is a tale diluted by multiple viewpoints and narrative voices, one which struggles to find its center the whole way through, while Sherry Moore herself is reduced to little more than a literary device used to advance the plot.

There was potential here - there was a dramatic story to be told (perhaps one that needed to be told), and a character that could have been a great vehicle for it. Through Sherry Moore, the unforgivable crimes of human trafficking, sex tourism, and slavery could have been revealed to us as they were to her, layer by disgusting layer, a whole world of depravity gone ignored for too long. When the result is a bland, unfocused story that limps from point A to point B and struggles to cross the finish line, I can't help but be a bit disappointed.

George Shuman deserves credit for trying to take on a hard subject. In the end, though, I came for a Sherry Moore story, like it says on the cover, and I didn't get one. If I had, it would have been a much better way to tell the story he wanted to tell.

This book grabs you from the first. Having not read any of the other Sherry Moore books I was still very intrigued.

Sherry reads a mans emotions and finds out some disturbing new. The man, "saw" things that deeply bothered Sherry and she finds herself along a path to destuction.

Jill is a young lady who, like most young ladies, is cought up in everyday things and surface things. She goes to the market and is abducted and sent to a compound for young women being sold for their bodies at the highest prices. Jill befriends a woman anmed Alexzandra and this take is about Jill's struggles, Alexandras bravery and Sherry being drawn into the vortex of evil these men have planned for these girls.

Very gripping and amazing tale, you cannot help but to put Natalie Holloway's face on Jill's as she struggles to to stay alive and her mother searches for her.

I have now read all of the Sherry Moore novels and I love every one of them. I don't understand why this author is not more well known. His books should be on best seller lists. Once I read 18 seconds, I was hooked! The last one, Lost Girls, is excellent on so many levels. Most importantly, though, is the subject matter----human trafficking. I didn't realize the extent of this atrocity until reading this book.

I am retired now and read alot of books. I have to say I have enjoyed these books the most in the past two years. Read them!!! You will love them,too.

In his first book, 18 SECONDS, the idea of a blind woman being able to see the last eighteen seconds of a dying person's thoughts was beyond brilliant. The problem I had, even back then, was his writing style. I think others saw it in LAST BREATH and I'd given up on the author completely until a friend recommended his latest book.

In LOST GIRLS, it starts out with a promise of excitement as Sherry travels to Mt. McKinley to assist Navy Seals in the rescue of a group of hikers. One of the hikers had been spotted hanging from a cliff. Her job was to touch the dead man in hopes of discovering where the other hikers were located. Not only did she find enough information for a successful rescue, but information that leads her to a place of horrors - a place where women were taken and sold into slavery.

There were two stories going on. One was with Sherry and her dear friend, Mr. Brigham. The other one was human trafficking. Before the two meet towards the end, I lost interest in the story. Maybe if I'd gone with text verses audio, I could have skimmed through and not felt so bogged down with the intense details. By the time I made it to the end, I didn't care what happened.

Out of all three books, this was the best of the lot. Even so, the good didn't outweigh the bad. That's me though. I am in the minority with my feelings as most of my friends thought this book was fantastic.

"Lost Girls" was the much anticipated sequel to "18 Seconds", and I was glad to see that it was offered thru Vine. I have read "18 Seconds" several months ago and enjoyed it a great deal. What I enjoyed the most about 18 Seconds was the concept of a blind woman (Sherry Moore) being able to see whatever the victim was thinking in the last 18 seconds of their lives. Stuck between the law enforcement and psychic worlds, Sherry Moore does everything that she can to close some difficult cases and bring closure/peace to grieving families. Despite dealing with several non-believers, Sherry answers several requests for assistance, and solves some horrific cases where law enforcement have no leads. While the "Lost Girls" tackled some very difficult topics and at times was hard to read, it also gave some insight into a world that I had no knowledge of. Witnessing and understanding the world of human trafficking and the women who live thru it was enlightening.

The story begins with Sherry Moore traveling to Alaska to help a family locate a missing hiker, but when she touches the hand of a dead man (hoping to get information that would assist searchers locate survivors of a snow storm), she sees images of something that disturbs her beyond words, and she finds them difficult to forget. Meanwhile, a world away (in the Caribbean), we discover that a young girl has been abducted while on a family vacation. While these two events seem unrelated, we soon find that they are when the body of the missing girl is discovered with an tattoo branded on her face. We soon discover that her death is linked to one of the most powerful and demented criminals in Haiti, who makes money off of enslaving and torturing women. As we navigate the novel and become privy to some of the most horrific crimes imagined, we also see Sherry's determination to bring closure to a mother who has lost her entire world.

While I enjoyed this book, I found it more difficult to complete than "18 Seconds", and I am not sure why. Maybe it was the subject matter or how at times the story skipped around (between the women being held, the dictator, Sherry, law enforcement and others). I should also warn readers that I am not sure if this was a good stand alone novel, because references are made to things that happened in previous books (Sherry's vision loss, her grief about her lost love, and several others). But overall, I think this book was readable and merits a "3".

Summoned to the Caribbean by a mysterious philanthropist to solve the mystery of a murdered woman whose body had been branded with a hunting tattoo, blind psychic Sherry Moore unveils key information about a human trafficking network and meets a legendary voodoo priest with powers like her own. BT.

This is the first novel I've read by Shuman featuring blind psychic Sherry Moore. The story moved at a rapid pace and the subject of human trafficking was both eye-opening and graphic. Though it was a stand alone thriller, some of the characters past could have been filled in a bit better. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the novel.