My rating: 2.5 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for ARC August reading challenge, it is #7 on list from my sign up post. I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.This book continues the story of Detective Jasmine Steele, picking up about 14 months after where the last book left off. Jazz has been in physical therapy and recovery pretty much this whole time (she got pretty beat up in the end of the first book) and physically she’s finally starting to feel close to normal again. Unfortunately she can’t seem to let get of the case that got away from her. She almost died at the end of the first book, was so close in fact that she had a conversation with her grandmother who told her to just let this whole thing go. But she becomes a woman obsessed with getting justice for her brother and sister-in-law. She begins to “fall down the rabbit hole” as she calls it. And really she’s just making it more difficult for herself; she so much wanted to get Frankie back in the first book and now she’s risking her relationship with her (again) by pushing her away and keeping her out. It’s so frustrating to see how much Frankie just wants to help or at least find Jazz help, but Jazz doesn’t want to talk to anyone. And Jazz really needs to talk to someone; she’s having very intense, awful nightmares where she can feel everything including being physically assaulted. She really needs to talk to a therapist about what the dreams mean and how to move past them and how to deal with the fact that she killed someone.
Anyways so in this book Jazz and her partner (Will) will have to solve a triple homicide case. It ends up being a much bigger case than just that and ends up involving a lot of different technology, including a program called the Dark Web which allows users to access basically an online black market. Jazz is able to connect some of the goings-on to Irving Garrison, the ultimate villain from the first book who she’s been obsessed with the past 14 months. And while all this is happening, Jazz and Frankie are also trying to decide whether or not they should adopt another child plus Frankie’s trying to deal with Jazz pushing her away again.
Overall I liked this book, it was a little less gory than the first book, which I appreciated, but I also thought there was a little less suspense and action in the plotline than the first book. I felt more like this book was an important piece of the story but was acting as a middle part to the story where we are building up to a grand finale, which I’m assuming is coming in the third book. I did find some of the transitions into new days or new scenes to be a bit short or choppy and sometimes I had trouble following the flow of information. Also some pieces of Jazz’s inner monologue seem almost forced or awkward. Other than that this was a good continuation of the series I think and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens in the third book in the series.