Book 54: Blood Ties

I just read one of the most wonderful easy to read but complex story by Kay Hooper called Blood Ties. It was everything I wanted Must Love Hellhounds to be. A perfect distraction to just unwind with yet engaging all at the same time.

Blood Ties is book that combines several things I just love. It has the criminal aspect and the logical nature of Criminal Minds thanks to the Special Crimes Unit (SCU). Plus it has a supernatural hint to it since every member of the SCU have special capabilities. There are mediums, seers, people who can sense danger, telepaths, and etc. It’s that niche where it’s supernatural but they could still work in real life.

Basically the SCU is brought into a small town called Serenade. They have to explore a serial killer who goes to extremes. But in the process, they learn that old cases aren’t so far in the past. So it creates a tense situation.

The characters are so well developed. The fear, the trust, and the things you keep hidden from your co-workers all makes perfect sense. I love how Diana has baggage but someone like Quentin to rely on not to mention other co-workers (Hollis and DeMarco) but she also holds back too. Unsure how far she can push it.

There was reference pages in the back of the book. Mainly it was only character bios (would have liked a little bit more info- see the next paragraph). It was great to access since at times I really needed to see who was who. Like about 300 pages in, all of sudden Hollis mentions a Reese and I was confused since I thought it was her and DeMarco mainly in the room. But the bio page showed me that it’s Reese DeMarco, so Hollis was using his real name showing how intimate they were.

There is only one major problem with this book-I walked in pretty much blind to previous events. Apparently there are twelve books in the series before this one. Which is amazing since it reads so fresh and it’s like book three or four in a series since the characters have hit their stride. But I wish there were more then footnotes indicating which books to looks at for some of the previous events. I could have used a page in the back that just summed up the past books or something.

But overall I loved Blood Ties. It was a great book. A great book to read and get sidetracked from the massive amount of coughing I’m doing.