If you are looking for a romance novel with hot guys Deeper Than the Dead is not the book for you. However, if you want a novel that is going to keep you up late and worry about what your neighbors are up to, you are going to love this novel. Deeper Than the Dead has all the ingredients a good thriller needs including crooked cops, creepy kids, grisly murders, and bizarre burials.

One of Hoag’s trademarks is her writing voice; it is consistent and smooth. That alone would be enough to have her standing out from the mass amount of authors who are currently penning books. Hoag is able to use this voice to create complex settings and interesting characters. I was very impressed with Hoag’s ability to leap from one character POV to another. Usually the character hopping gives me a hopping, but Hoag was able to pull it off in a way that was very easy to follow. More importantly, by leaping POV’s Hoag was able to make me feel sympathetic towards the characters, even the ones who are clearly evil. All of her characters were well developed and stayed very consistent to themselves throughout the entire novel.

As soon as you open the book you are launched directly into the middle of a torture scene. Mixed into the victims thoughts are flashes of a letter that has clearly been written by a child, glorifying their father. The next scene is set in a fifth grade classroom and ends with the discovery of a decomposing body. The scene is important because it introduces you to many of the main characters in a way that is both interesting and believable.

Deeper Than the Dead reads very quickly, which is a good thing because once you start to read it, you will find that putting it down is very nearly impossible.