On a more personal level, she differs from me in her ability to let herself feel her emotions and feel them hard. I tend to push emotions away immediately while in work-mode, and it was important to me that she be strong, but real as well. I love how she can both experience her emotions authentically and focus on her bigger picture of speaking for the dead. People look for patterns that aren’t there because they are scared shitless. They can’t handle that they are just as likely to be scooped up by a totally normal-looking psychopath as the victims were, so they make this crap up instead.” This novel follows our main character Wren, a forensic pathologist, who ends up doing more detective work instead of staying at the morgue where her ass belongs. She examines the bodies of people that will killed by the so-called "Bayou Butcher", Jeremy who provides the secondary perspective in this novel.

The author brilliantly crafts a darkly, intelligent, addictive, and twisty unputdownable (hopefully a new series) psychological crime thriller mixed with humor, keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Member Reviews

While Wren usually has a genial relationship with Police Detective John Leroux, she is a bit annoyed when he laughs off this observation. Frustrated, she tells him:

As a kid, he took out books at the library on lobotomies. He became entranced with medical procedures of Dr. Freeman. We hear about his earlier time in a lab and his lab partners. CAPTIVATING. T he reader might want to shut their eyes, but the joust between the killer and the pathologist makes that impossible' DAILY MAIL The stereotypes don’t stop with the setting either – the characters are also walking cliches. And it’s all the characters. They’re all cardboard cutouts which evoke no empathy in the reader at all. There is some attempt at giving us insight into why the killer behaves as he does but I found this heavy handed. One sequence in particular is undoubtedly meant to horrify the reader and although it is longwinded, what actually happens is fairly common in rural/hunting communities. However these efforts are fruitless since by the end of the book the killer is just ‘evil’. We don’t get any understanding of the motives of the killer, especially in relation to Wren, and overall the character is underdeveloped. Nor do we really get any insight into Wren herself, despite being the main character. We get a series of neurotic aspects to her personality but it’s never really explained why she’s even involved in the case, other than doing the autopsies which is her job. The police officers are portrayed as fairly useless unless Wren needs someone to converse with to move the story along.I want to preface this by saying a HUGE thank you to Zando for this #gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review! I practically cried when I received this beautiful book mail last week. I have wanted a copy of The Butcher and the Wren ever since hearing about it on Morbid a few months prior. We got to see a lot of his quirks come through in this book, and I only wish the other characters were as developed as he was :( One thing I did like was how Jeremy was all for the chase. In most of the horror books I read (not many), the killer takes his time, sure, but he is more eager and sloppy than Jeremy is. So I appreciated reading the meticulous planning and thought that goes into Jeremey's actions in every chapter. I'm sorry, but this was very, very poor writing. A true, good publisher would never have let this happen without numerous edits. Urquhart] uses all aspects of her familiarity with crime, corpses and the practices of forensic pathology to write convincingly about the showdown between a serial killer and an ME. Her setting is especially absorbing, from the haunting darkness of the bayou at night to the rising fears of the characters’ fellow parishioners…. I found that mid-book twist delightfully astonishing—and I’m hoping to read more from her.” - Doreen Sheridan, Criminal Element