4*’s
For lovers of mystery this book contains the lot; a missing girl, a disturbed young boy, a mother at her wits end and a journal! The journal is inserted throughout the book and it is for the reader to deduce who wrote it.
Set in Florida, Lana Granger is studying at a small college when the time comes for her to branch out from the life of academia and supplement her inheritance with a part-time job. When a babysitting job is advertised on the notice board it seem like fate has worked in her favour and she starts work with Rachel and her disturbed son Luke.
The problem is that Lana is living a life of lies. She is hiding her past, a past that includes her deeply troubled childhood spent living in an unhappy household. Lana is determined to keep her previous life a complete secret which results in her feeling threatened when her friend goes missing and the police turn up asking questions that Lana would rather not answer.
This book is full of twists and turns with a real underlying theme of nature versus nurture to tease the reader. Although I had a good idea on the whodunit early in the book, I was searching for the reason why, which was a little more elusive. This being the case there was a number of twists to keep me reading as the entire jigsaw of characters played their parts in the race to lay the blame at each other’s door for every minor event that took them up to that point.
As well as the murder this novel also explores our interest in murderers that spawns media attention, how a pretty young adult will hold the front page much more effectively than one full of piercings, how the internet makes it hard to hide and stay hidden as well as touching on the issues surrounding the death penalty, giving the reader a fair bit apart from the crime to ponder on.
I was lucky to receive a free copy of this book from the publishers Simon and Schuster UK in return for this review. In The Blood was published in the UK on 13 February 2014 and I’m off choose one of Lisa Unger’s previous books to add to my shelf!
Another great book for my TBR list!
I am opting for 36-hour-days, now. 😉
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Wouldn’t that be wonderful! This was quite a quick read so you may fit it into one of the shorter days 😉
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Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind! 🙂
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Sounds good! Great review!
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It has plenty of twists and turns to keep you interested although the whodunit isn’t a huge mystery!
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Ooh I like the sound of this – set in Florida too! The inclusion of a diary being revealed is also something very interesting. Great review!
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Thank you 🙂 I do love it when a diary is included, this one was especially good as it took me some time to work out whose diary it was!
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Free copies are awesome. A great review! I will investigate this one. I’m up to my eyeballs on crime novels. 🙂
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Me too 🙂 I have done so well with free copies of some fantastic books this year and I do love a good bit of criminality 😉
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I read one Lisa Unger but felt she spread it on a bit thick – just about everything was happening to this poor woman, and she would have still had my sympathy with much less! But that being said, she came across as a very good plotter, and I do love a book with twists and turns. I will have to try her again.
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There was a little bit of suspending belief in this one but on the whole the coverage seemed spot on, I tend to dislike the over-egging routine too! Maybe she has lost this tendency?
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I’ll be interested to see what you think of some of her other stuff. As you know, I liked her style but was disappointed with the obviousness of whodunit. But I’m intrigued to know if she manages to maintain the mystery better in her other books. Glad you enjoyed this one! 🙂
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I had my doubts after your review but maybe the virus I’m battling made me less astute, although I did work out the whodunit I didn’t get the other pieces of the puzzle until soon before they were put into place 😉
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