The Weight Of Blood by Laura McHugh

Advanced Reading Copy from Random House Publishing Group

The Dane family’s roots tangle deep in the Ozark Mountain town of Henbane, but that doesn’t keep sixteen-year-old Lucy Dane from being treated like an outsider. Folks still whisper about her mother, a bewitching young stranger who inspired local myths when she vanished years ago. When one of Lucy’s few friends, slow-minded Cheri, is found murdered, Lucy feels haunted by the two lost girls-the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t protect. Everything changes when Lucy stumbles across Cheri’s necklace in an abandoned trailer and finds herself drawn into a search for answers. What Lucy discovers makes it impossible to ignore the suspicion cast on her own kin. More alarming, she suspects Cheri’s death could be linked to her mother’s disappearance, and the connection between the two puts Lucy at risk of losing everything. In a place where the bonds of blood weigh heavy, Lucy must decide where her allegiances lie.

I love when an ARC (advanced reader copy) just knocks your socks off! Not only was this an excellent story rooted with ties that bind in family, in friendships, in guilt and in secrecy; it also introduced me to a new author to watch out for in the future. This book will suck you in from page one and you’ll appreciate the way the author uses different character’s voices to tell the story. The book title offers lots of speculation yet it covers all the bases involving the strength of familial blood and the dark side of both blood money and a murderer’s blood. I highly recommend this thrilling read as Lucy tries to uncover if her friend’s murderer is connected to her mother’s disappearance and whether or not her family is connected. Enjoy!

– “I took in the thick night air, the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the chirping of frogs, to impress the moment in the folds of my memory, preserve it like a flower between pages of a book. To remember: This is how it feels to be happy.”

– “In world history, one of the few classes she’d stayed awake for, men killed their enemies and raped their enemies’ women. She wondered why men fucked what they hated and fucked what they loved and fucked what they didn’t give a fuck about. Maybe they wanted to fuck everything, nothing to do with the way they felt, just an uncontrollable urge. Thrust, grunt conquer.”

– “He wanted to protect me, to lock me back in a box I no longer fit inside, though he knew as well as anyone that it wasn’t possible to move in reverse; no matter hard we fought against it, time flowed in only one direction.”

– “You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There’s no forsaking kin. But you can’t help when kin forsakes you or when strangers come to be family.”