Review: Long Time Gone - Charlie Donlea - May 2024 Sometimes the best hooks come from the most unexpected places. I'll admit, I wasn't planning to dive straight into another Charlie Donlea novel, but after finishing Those Empty Eyes, I found myself face-to-face with the opening chapters of Long Time Gone tucked right there at the end. Two chapters in, and I was completely hooked—there's something about Charlie Donlea's ability to weave DNA mysteries with missing persons cases that just hits all my reading sweet spots. Long Time Gone follows Dr. Sloane Hastings, a forensic pathology student working under one of the world's best. As part of her thesis on DNA and crime solving, Sloane decides to submit her own genetic material—partly for research, partly out of curiosity about her adoption. What she discovers turns her world completely upside down. Sloane wasn't just adopted; she was stolen. And the day before her "adoption," her entire biological famil...

Review: Those Empty Eyes - Charlie Donlea - March 2023 Sometimes you stumble across an author who just gets how to craft a proper thriller, and Charlie Donlea has definitely earned his spot on my auto-buy list. After being completely hooked by Twenty Years Later and its masterful twists, I found myself scrolling through my Kindle library like a kid in a candy store, looking for my next Charlie Donlea fix. That's when Those Empty Eyes practically jumped off my digital shelf. The story kicks off with Alex Quinlan, a teenager whose life gets absolutely destroyed when she's branded as the monster who slaughtered her own family. The media circus around her case is brutal – they even give her the chilling nickname "Empty Eyes" because of her distinctive gaze. But here's the thing that immediately drew me in: Alex is innocent, and she knows it. What follows is a gripping journey as she spends years fighting to clear her name, eventually winning her freedom and a hefty d...