Trigger warning: themes such as sexual assault and child abuse are present in the novel and this review.
The third book in Dot Hutchison’s The Collector Series is The Summer Children and this novel is just as entertaining as its two predecessors, The Butterfly Garden and The Roses of May. The four book series follows three FBI agents: Vic, Eddison, and Ramirez. The third instalment of this series introduces a new main character, Eliza Sterling (Sterling throughout the novel) who was first introduced in the second book The Roses of May. In The Summer Children readers follow Mercedes Ramirez as she narrates the story starting with when a child covered in blood ends up sitting on her porch. The team must do everything they can to find out why a killer is leaving children with the message that Mercedes will save them along with a white teddy bear with gold wings. The Summer Children continues following the slow burn police procedural vibes as The Roses of May and includes elements of a thriller like The Butterfly Garden.
There is a strong female presence throughout The Collector Series and all of those female characters are quite similar: stubborn, strong-willed, and ferociously protective of one another. While it is fantastic to see a female dominated cast of characters, it can become a tad overdone to have a lot of the same personality traits present for each one. There are some traits that define each of the characters, but overall they all feel quite similar. Hutchison does a wonderful job bringing in the characters from the two previous novels and tying them into The Summer Children. The author reminds the reader about who characters are and what they have done in the previous two novels to help remember who each character is. This is done in a way that is natural and doesn’t take away from the new story. While at times her characters can feel like the same person, they do all have distinct characteristics that make the story interesting enough for the reader to want to learn more about them all.
There are a lot of dark themes that are present throughout the entire Collector Series and the three that stand out the most in The Summer Children are: nature vs nurture, child abuse, and sexual assault. Hutchison takes the nature vs nurture debate and shows how two people with very similar backgrounds can end up on completely different paths in life. In The Summer Children, the use of serial killers’ childhoods as well as Ramirez’s childhood to show how each of them became who they are in the present. The two extremes of a spectrum are shown of what can happen to someone as they grow up and how they choose to deal with the trauma. The serial killer in The Summer Children believes that they are saving children from their abusers just in the same way that Ramirez is saving children from their abusers. Obviously these are two completely different sides of a spectrum but it is fascinating how Hutchison parallels these two people’s lives throughout the story. Sexual assault is something that is present throughout the entire Collector Series and this can be extremely triggering to those who have not dealt with their own trauma and dive into reading The Collector Series without knowing that these themes are present. Hutchison’s prose is dark and captivating, and she does an excellent job of addressing sensitive topics while also writing an enthralling story. She has created an interesting group of characters, albeit they all feel very similar, they all have quirks that make them interesting to the reader. It will be interesting to see what the fourth and final book of The Collector Series has in store for Eddison, Vic, Ramirez, and Sterling.
The Summer Children is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore!
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Synopsis | Goodreads
This FBI agent has come to expect almost anything—just not this…
When Agent Mercedes Ramirez finds an abused young boy on her porch, covered in blood and clutching a teddy bear, she has no idea that this is just the beginning. He tells her a chilling tale: an angel killed his parents and then brought him here so Mercedes could keep him safe.
His parents weren’t just murdered. It was a slaughter—a rage kill like no one on the Crimes Against Children team had seen before. But they’re going to see it again. An avenging angel is meting out savage justice, and she’s far from through.
One by one, more children arrive at Mercedes’s door with the same horror story. Each one a traumatized survivor of an abusive home. Each one chafing at Mercedes’s own scars from the past. And each one taking its toll on her life and career.
Now, as the investigation draws her deeper into the dark, Mercedes is beginning to fear that if this case doesn’t destroy her, her memories might.
