Heartstopper

By: Joy Fielding

Narrated by: Judith West

Welcome to Torrance, Florida. Population: 4,160. As Sheriff John Weber would attest, the deadliest predators to date in his tiny hamlet were the alligators lurking in the nearby swamps. But that was before someone abducted and murdered a runaway teenage girl...and before the disappearance of popular and pretty Liana Martin. The pattern is chilling to Sandy Crosbie, the town's new high school English teacher. With a marriage on the rocks, thanks to her husband's online affairs, and a beautiful teenage daughter to protect, Sandy wishes she'd never come to the seemingly quiet town with shocking depths of scandal, sex, and brutality roiling beneath its surface. And as Sheriff Weber digs up more questions than answers in a dead-end investigation, one truth emerges: the prettiest ones are being targeted, the heartstoppers. And this killer intends to give them their due....

Alternating between the chilling journal entries of a cold-blooded murderer and the sizzling scandals of small-town life, Heartstopper is Joy Fielding's most exciting novel of suspense yet.

©2007 Joy Fielding (P)2007 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

One to relisten to

The narrator does a phenomenal job with the story line and “killer’s journal”. Her voices were consistent and amazing. I truly enjoyed the twists and turns. Several times through, I can still suspend my disbelief long enough to be surprised again.

Good Book

I like Joy Fielding books and this was no exception. It was great and I was very surprised to find out who the killer was. I read so many mysteries, I've gotten pretty good at guessing, but this one was a real surprise.

The ending

I love that she writes for a female audience and talks about their emotions. The women always win!

Kept Me Guessing

I enjoyed the book very much. I kept me guessing until the very end as to who the killer was. There was good character development, and it kept my interest from start to finish. I really enjoyed it.

Entertaining, suspenseful, reality based

Overall, an entertaining story if one can deal with the soap opera-ness of the story. Initially, the plot of this story was unbelievable. The idea of a family uprooting themselves in order for the father, a doctor, to live closer to a woman with whom he wanted to consumate an on-line affair was ridiculous. The fact that the woman also had an on/off affair with another character was just too much. What was also over the top was that the doctor's wife was a teacher. The daughter of the woman with whom he was having an affair is in the wife's class. The high school connection--harassment, teen sex, bitchy teen-age girls was too trite and full of overdone themes. For example, there was way too much emphasis on the high school cliques and how teen-agers bully each other in person and on-line. I also disliked the narrator's protrayal of male voices. Why try? The worse part was the ending of the story. It was very amatuerist. It seems as though the author rushed the ending to meet a deadline. She just had a character list what happened to other characters. Over 4 minutes of this was sickening. I cannot recommend this book or and probably will not read from this author again.