🟥 Blood Trail (2003) Review - We Gotta Create Drama Somehow, I Guess | Book Waffle

   Blood Trail book cover

Blood Trail (2003) written by Nancy Springer

Goodness. That was bad.

Blood Trail is a novella that follows the tale of one Jeremy "Booger" Davis after his best friend is suddenly murdered. What begins as a personal, introspective narrative about dealing with the death of a close friend slowly morphs into town-wide fallout as questions about the unknown murderer linger.

I like simple and fast writing styles, but the narrative voice is grating. And it's not just the protagonist; I hate all of the characters in this book. They are annoying and unbelievable.

The melodrama is intense, and it has to be because nothing happens in the later half of this story. The conflict is manufactured and contrived. Sorry, but informing the police that your best friend was afraid of the murderer mere minutes before they were slaughtered by said person is not "ratting them out". Just a baffling conflict that dominates most of the pages.

There is ambiguity as to what exactly happened which I thought was nice. This includes a couple interesting scenes that subtly suggest that the killer's identity may be someone different. Perhaps someone that the victim's family wants to keep hidden. And I think there is a lesson in the book ending on the demure note that it did.

But, all-in-all, this was really not it.

🟥 Rating: 2/10

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