This review is written with thanks to the TBC Reviewers Group and the publisher for my copy of Blood Like Mine.

Blurb:

You would do anything to protect your child.
Even if she’s a monster . . .

Rebecca Carter and her daughter Monica, nicknamed Moonflower, travel the American West, always on the move, always hiding, always looking behind them, always keeping Moonflower out of sight.
They speak to no one, only interacting with people when it’s absolutely necessary.

But wherever they go, bodies are left behind.

Special Agent Marc Donner of the FBI has been tracking a killer for the best part of two years. A murderer that strikes once every few weeks. The victims are all men, many disappearing only to be found months later, dumped in forests or rivers or quarries, far from their places of death. All of them with their throats opened, their bodies bled out and their spinal cords severed.

The killer leaves no trace, no clues – only a trail of corpses.

After all this time, Donner has gleaned only a handful of facts from the few witnesses and snippets of CCTV footage available. He’s hunting a middle-aged woman who drives a van with blacked-out windows and false plates. Often she poses as a child online to lure in her prey. It’s never been enough to track her down though.

Until now.

And so begins a cat-and-mouse game between Donner and his prey, Rebecca and Moonflower. But who is the actual hunter – and who is the actual prey? For perhaps Moonflower isn’t the child that her mother claims she is. Perhaps she’s something else – and as Donner puts everything on the line to capture them and prove his suspicions right, perhaps he isn’t prepared to face what is really out there.

Let the Right One In meets Stephen King in this chilling thriller about a mother’s love, a daughter’s devotion, a man’s obsession – and the darkness that lives within us all.

Review:

I’ve never read anything like Blood Like Mine and I love that Stuart Neville has come up with such a unique premise and executed it so well. It doesn’t really fit into a particular genre and there’s a mythological element to it that would normally make me feel wary of a novel, but I absolutely loved it.

There’s a sense of mystery, foreboding and darkness from the very first page and Stuart Neville’s writing brings the reader right into the atmosphere. The characters are clearly hiding some secrets and I was compelled to continue reading until I had the full story. It did take me some time to figure out what was going on, but I enjoyed every part of the ride. The chapters are quite short so it’s very easy to read “just one more chapter” and forget about the outside world.

The protagonists of Blood Like Mine are mother and daughter, Rebecca and Monica, or “Moonflower”. It’s really difficult to describe them without spoilers, but it’s safe to say they are utterly fascinating and well drawn, and I loved how the author reveals the details to the reader gradually. There are sections of the novel that are written in the form of letters or diary entries and this gives us interesting insight into how the characters came to be how they are now.

There are also several chapters from the police officers involved in the story and Stuart Neville has also created compelling back stories for these, which means that the procedural side of the novel is always fast paced and exciting.

Blood Like Mine is very well plotted and I loved seeing how everything would come together in a brilliantly tense ending. 

Blood Like Mine is available from Amazon.