Customer Reviews

Lost Souls (New Orleans Series)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Kristi Bentz wants to be a true-crime writer. She's got a great background for it, having already tangled with two serial killers in her young life. Against her over-protective father's wishes, she re-enrolls in All Saints College in Baton Rouge.

All Saints has livened up its English Department with attractive professors and trendy courses, but all is not well. Four girls have disappeared in the past two years, all enrolled in the same English courses including The Influence of Vampyrism in Modern Culture and Literature. Kristi sees the coed disappearances as subject matter for her first book, and her research draws her into a ring of evil. She infiltrates a group of students who play in vampire chat rooms, wear tiny vials of blood on gold chains, and hold secret meetings after hours in the cellar of a museum. She's determined to solve the mystery of the disappearances, against the wishes of her father Rick, a New Orleans detective, and her boyfriend Jay McKnight, back in her life after a breakup years before.

While LOST SOULS is based on a vampire theme, its evil is strictly of this world rather than supernatural. The main characters are well drawn and engaging; the dialog and action flow easily. One of the strong elements is the moody atmosphere of post-Katrina Louisiana, effectively woven into the story.

I took one star off for a bit more foreshadowing than I like; otherwise this is a thoroughly entertaining read. If you like complex, well written romantic suspense novels with a double dose of suspense, don't miss LOST SOULS. Author Lisa Jackson kept me reading -- and guessing -- right to the end. Thanks also to bookreporter dot com, in whose contest I won an ARC of this excellent book.

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary: men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." Joseph Conrad.

Linda Bulger, 2008

It's been a year and a half since Kristie Bentz's coma. She's ready to go back to All Saints College and has registered for winter classes. Her desire to become a crime writer prompts her interest in the four missing coeds, one of which lived in her very apartment before she went missing.

Teaching one of her classes is Jay McKnight, a high school sweetheart she dumped in a previous book. He also has been working in the New Orleans crime lab. They team up to uncover clues that tie the missing women to a dark vampire cult on campus. What they don't realize is the killer knows of Kristie's every move and has from the day she arrived on campus.

LOST SOULS is part of the New Orleans series. I highly recommend these books to be read in order. This one is a sequel to one of the previous books. Out of the books I've read, this is my second favorite. HOT BLOODED is the first. Here are the titles:

* Hot Blooded (2001)
* Cold Blooded (2002)
* Shiver (2006)
* Absolute Fear (2007)
* Almost Dead (2007)
* Lost Souls (2008)
* Malice (2009)

HOT BLOODED still remains my favorite of the entire series.

Last night, at page 198, I finally gave up on this book. No way could I finish it; it is just way too boring and slow to capture my interest at all.

For a book touted on the flyleaf as "her most harrowing novel yet", I kept wondering when Jackson was going to throw in some "harrow". This thing moves at an absolute snail's pace; the characters are simply bo-o-o-o-ring people; the characterizations are two-dimensional at best, paper thin; and to this point in the book, almost NOTHING has happened.

Endless drivel about character Kristi's class schedule, work schedule, and her angst that one of her profs is an old boyfriend. More endless pages about the prof's angst that Kristi's his student. Ya-a-a-a-awn......

Meanwhile police departments everywhere are unbelievably uninterested about a possible serial killer in the area; and I mean "unbelievably".

The Bad Guy -- what little I've seen of him to this point in the book -- isn't really all that interesting, either; pretty run-of-the-mill bad guy.

It seems there's some tie-in to Goth practices or vampire obsession, but frankly.......... who cares? This book just doesn't interest me enough to try to wade through all this boring nonsense to find out about it.

One star at best.

Ridiculous and unbelievable. Kristi is really dumb. I actually liked the fact that you don't find out her age until later on, because interacting with her parents I thought she was 18. (She's 27). She supposedly almost got killed by two serial killers in her past and now she's looking for another one? Hasn't she learned anything? Furthmore there is nothing even likable about her personality. She callously dumps her boyfriend for someone else, and he's still somehow in love with her. She tampers with evidence rendering a case against a serial killer completely null. As a cops daughter you'd think she would know better, but this girl is an idiot.

I cannot stress enough how BORING this book is. I'm not even finished with it and I want to fling it across the room, but I plod on because I want to see which of the ridiculous characters is the "villain". The heroine is a dud, and the premise of the story is nonsensical. If I pick up another Lisa Jackson, please hit me over the head with it! My advice is, don't waste your money on this one. Buy a REAL thriller
instead, which this most certainly is NOT.

Kristi Bentz has survived being nearly killed twice, by a serial killer. Now she is trying to get on with her life and hopefully attain her goal of becoming a true-crime writer. And even though her dad only wants her safe, in New Orleans with him and her stepmother, Kristi has to move forward. Her first step is to further her education by becoming a student at All Saints College and enrolling in All Saints' English classes. Kristi does not need to tell her Dad that the four students who have gone missing from the college in the last two years, took the same courses and her course load is doing double duty as research for her first novel.

Of course life is never easy. Besides the serial killer and her cop father, there is also the ex-boyfriend she left behind many years ago and the dark cult. All of which add to a life that is more interesting than it should be on occasion.

I loved Lost Souls. Lost Souls is a fast-paced, intriguing novel that looks at some of the dark aspects of life. I have enjoyed Lisa Jackson's books in the past, but this one to me, was just perfect. I could not put it down. I found her descriptions to be exactly what was needed and as always Ms. Jackson gives the reader all the information they need - while managing to surprise with twists and turns. All the characters are well drawn to the point you feel the urge to hug the `lost souls' and smack the main characters for being idiots. And as for the relationship between Kristi and her father Rick, I just enjoyed how developed it was, and how well they knew each other. Also Ms. Jackson writes excellent, twisted personalities for the leaders of the cult and those they have affected. For all this and more, I am Joyfully Recommending Lost Souls.

Emma
reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

Let me begin by saying that for the most part, I have enjoyed every Lisa Jackson book I have ever read and always look forward to the next one, however, this one has brought me to the brink of saying enough is enough. To be honest I just wanted to grab Kristi Bentz by the throat and slap her a few times so she might wake up to reality. And Jay McKnight!!! What a loser for a hero. Dr. Grotto!! What the heck was he thinking? Come on for goodness sake. What about Father Mathias? Do all of these people live in the Twilight Zone or something? Lucretia, Ariel, Dionne, Bethany. How did these people even get into college with I.Q.s in single digits? It took me a lonnnnng time to wade through this fairly short book, but I plodded on hoping for a climax that would pay off my persistance, but alas, the climax to this book was a dud. It arrived suddenly and was over. Also, the final scene in the hospital room was a complete rip off in that it was nothing more than a promo for the next Lisa Jackson book, which i will probably read because I haven't jumped off the Lisa Jackson fan club bus yet, but I am near that point. I hate to say it, but my suggestion for LOST SOULS is skip it. It is slow, boring and doesn't make much sense. The plot is silly, the heroine is an idiot and the hero is blah. Find a better way to spend a month or two trying to read a book.

I am a HUGE Lisa Jackson fan and she is one of those authors I buy without even bothering to read the synopsis of the story AND I keep all her books. I went back and reread "Absolute Fear" because it had been some time since I read it and I wanted to pick up on the characters again and even though I'd already read it, I could not put it down.

THIS BOOK, however, has been a different story. I am on page 235 and I don't know if I can even finish it because it is so slow and boring. I don't think I've ever jumped to the end of a book to see how it ends to keep from reading the whole thing, but I may make an exception for this one.

I don't know if I subconsciously do not LIKE Kristi (which could be the case because I think she is hateful and disrespectful to her father and step-mother) or because I really am not wild about paranormal story lines, but I just CANNOT get into it.

Long, wordy, boring, redundant, and predictable.

I can't think of anything positive about this book. I had enough at the two thirds point and quit. I am only sorry I didn't stop sooner.

It is reminiscent of that term paper that had to be 1,000 words but you felt you covered the subject in 800 so you added more elaborate descriptions.

The book reads like the author was being paid by the word.

I will say right off the bat that this isn't my favourite book by a long shot. However, having read quite a few dreadful books recently - books that have four and a half or five star ratings on Amazon - I simply cannot believe all of the hate for what I found to be quite an enjoyable read.

I agree that Lost Souls was a little slow going. I think a good edit was in order. But I also found this a fascinating story, and I loved most of the characters.

Contrary to what was stated in another review, there is little in the way of sex in this book, and nothing in the way of soap opera. I actually found myself wondering why authors such as Lisa Jackson can constantly be found under a romance category when I did not feel at all as if I was reading a romance novel. And it is not `chick lit', and I wish men did not feel the need to classify all female writers as being authors of this genre. It is insulting and sexist.

Additionally, contrary to what another reviewer stated, there is nothing paranormal about this story. It is about people in a cult-like situation who believe in the paranormal. People who are delusional. Nothing paranormal is actually going on. That was what was interesting about the premise.

I'm sorry, but I simply could not sit back and let this book get trashed when there are SO many far worse books out there that are being recommended left right and centre.