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"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" --… (més)
BookshelfMonstrosity: Questions of family loyalty trouble resourceful teen girls in these stark and menacing novels of hardscrabble life in the Ozark hills. Both fast-paced literary thrillers combine a strong sense of place with haunting characters and clear-eyed depictions of violence.… (més)
It took me a few chapters to realize the story was switching between current time and the past, and then I started putting the pieces together and had a pretty good idea how the story would unfold. There were a few unexpected twists, but I enjoyed having the pieces put together. I like it when a book wraps up all the loose ends and doesn't leave you wondering what happened to so and so. There's not much else I feel I can say w/o giving away the plot and story, but it doesn't take long to figure out what's coming. ( )
How in the hell did it not click she was cleaning up her friend's murder scene and helping somebody get away with that murder?
Hello? Any comments about that? Your uncle assigned you the task of cleaning up the crime scene of your friend's murder, helping ensure it won't be solved. ( )
This was my second try at reading this one. It just didn't grab me the first time but the audio book that I was able to get from the library helped me get into it and stay involved.
It was a lot slower than I had thought it would be. And the mystery bits weren't as mysterious or intense as I had hoped. But even with that said, I felt for most of the characters - particularly the women. I think the author did a great job of writing Lila and Lucy and I liked that she set their POVs apart by making them first person, rather than the third person everyone else was done in.
I do wish the book had been a bit more intense but I liked the darkness of it. I'd give another book by this author a shot and would recommend it to my friends who like darker themed books.
*I received the ebook from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review. I have a more detailed review on C-Spot Reviews. ( )
With her riveting debut, "The Weight of Blood," Laura McHugh makes a strong bid at cementing a new tradition of regional crime fiction while keeping tourism low in the Ozarks........McHugh has crafted a sharp, haunting tale of blood in the Ozarks, as substantial as it is pleasurable to read.
McHugh cleverly tells the story in several first-person voices, mostly that of Lucy and her mother. The reader will know early on who the primary villain is, and may wonder at Lucy’s naiveté in not figuring it out sooner. But as in real life but oh-so-rarely in fiction, the villain here may not be 100 percent villainous, nor are the good guys necessarily 100 percent blame-free.
The plot will keep readers of The Weight of Blood reading far past their bedtimes, but it’s McHugh’s shadings and subtleties of character that’ll have them looking at their own families with new eyes and looking for her next book with eager ones.
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
For Brent, Harper, and Piper
Primeres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
That Cheri Stoddard was found at all was the thing that set people on edge, even more so than the condition of her body.
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There’s no forsaking kin.
It was common knowledge that in the hills, with infinite hiding places, bodies disappeared. They were fed to hogs or buried in the woods or dropped into abandoned wells. They were not dismembered and set out on display. It just wasn't how things were done. It was that lack of adherence to custom that scared people the most. Why would someone risk getting caught to show us what he'd done to Cheri when it would've been so easy to keep her body hidden? The only reasonable explanation was that an outsider was responsible, and outsiders bred fear in a way no homegrown criminal could.
Spring was short-lived. The hills were ecstatic with blooms, an embarrassing wealth of trees and wildflowers: dogwoods in cream and pink, clouds of bright lavender redbuds, carpets of phlox and toothwort and buttercups. Then the leaves filled out the canopy, draping the woods in shadow. The vines and underbrush greened and resumed their constant creeping, and the heat blossomed into a living thing, its unwanted hands upon us at all times.
When Cheri turned up in the tree, I knew uncertainty wasn't the worst part. It was a luxury, a gift. The worst part was knowing for sure that your loved one was dead, and I was grateful then that my mother's body had never been found. The mystery eats away at you, but it leaves a thin rind of hope.
I snapped on the bedside lamp, sending shadows scurrying up the lavender walls, and turned on the fan in the window next to my bed.
Black flakes like falling ash scattered across the moon as bats swirled through the sky.
"Sure," I said. "But you don't have to worry about me. I'm really good at taking care of myself." "I know," he said softly, looking down at his plate. As though he regretted that fact.
Everybody knew that Daniel's mom took food stamps and his dad and three older brothers were in prison. But I knew him another way. He occupied a line in my book of lists, kiss number four from the time I played spin the bottle. The first three were classmates who never paid any attention to me at school, and one of them was so embarrassed to be kissing me that he only pecked me on the cheek. Daniel had been sitting outside the circle the entire time, not participating, but when the bottle pointed in his direction, he grudgingly came forward and slid his hand along my jaw, gazing down at me with a grim expression before leaning in. It was awkward at first, but almost immediately something shifted, and for the first time in my admittedly brief experience with boys, I felt a kiss beyond the reach of lips; it spread through me, warming, loosening, and my insides fluttered, thwap thwap thwap, like a deck of cards collapsing in a dovetail shuffle. I'd clutched his shirt to pull him closer. Everyone laughed when he gently—firmly—pushed me away, but I was too stunned to care what they thought.
His laugh was husky and soft as he studied me, half-delighted, half-confused, as though I were some mythical creature he had heard about but wasn't sure existed.
"She's from Iowa," Gabby said, as if it was equivalent to Oz.
I slept so hard I didn't remember my dreams, and I liked it that way.
I thought about what Mrs. Stoddard had said about being haunted by Cheri's ghost. If I didn't find out what had happened to her, she would always be drifting somewhere in the ether, a life that never quite materialized. She would haunt me in a quiet, ghostless way, the knowledge that in life I had neglected to save her, and in death failed to bring her peace. I would have preferred to see her ghost, in the way that I'd always hoped to be visited by my mother's. But ghosts never came when you wanted them to, and I didn't know how to stop wanting.
Everything that came after hinged on her lie, a door swinging open on a future that hadn't existed until that moment.
I waited for Ransome to say something more, but she was staring into a past I couldn't see, images that no longer existed anywhere except in her head.
As I left Ransome in the place she'd never get out of, a warren of stale, dark rooms, I wondered what she'd done that she felt deserved such penance.
I didn't feel safe—memories of the attack hung over me like storm clouds—but somehow, in the bright bedroom, I felt a little less afraid.
Gabby stared at me the way people do when you have a spider on you but they haven't figured out a good way to tell you.
Time stopped as all the different pieces came together.
I felt too hollow even to summon up tears.
He didn't have to worry about that now, and freed from worry, he had plenty of room for guilt.
Cheri and Lila, two lost girls, bookends with a lifetime of mysteries between them.
It occurred to her then that there was a reason age drained the pleasure out of life, slowly stripping away all the things you enjoyed or took for granted. It was so you wouldn't need convincing when the time came. You'd be ready, because everything good in life was gone.
Darreres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
I let myself get lost in the moment, looking neither forward nor back, seeking nothing absent but embracing what was right in front of me.
"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" --
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