What would you do for your daughter?

Information:

• Goodreads: 4.10 out of 112 Ratings
• Age Category: Adult
• Genre: Horror, Thriller
• Series: None

Summary:

FBI Agent Donner is on the hunt for a pedophile killer. He feels as if it’s his job to make these guys face legal consequences; it isn’t someone else’s job to just kill them. Rebecca feels as if she’s helping the world – and her daughter – out by killing these men off. What ensues is a gripping cat and mouse as a mother desperately tries to do everything she can for her daughter’s sake and man who is desperate to fix his life by catching a killer.

– Trigger Warnings: talk of pedophiles, murder, bloody. While a pedophile is lured in by a young girl, there is no on screen rape. He is murdered before he does anything.

Review:

I started this book at 8 am before work started it. I then finished it by 9 that evening. It is absolutely compulsively readable with short enough chapters that I didn’t find myself wandering after a day of work. There is not a single character in this that I liked. They are all garbage. And I loved it. Moonflower is 12 and stuck in a van perpetually. She also doesn’t really have a ton of personality to her, she’s just the vehicle that really drives the story. She gives Rebecca a reason to continue to do what she’s doing and she gives Donner something to hunt during his unraveling life. Also, I hate Moonflower as a name. Donner is an alcoholic who left his family 3 years ago. Why? Couldn’t tell ya, don’t think it was ever explained. He wasn’t kicked out, he just left. Rebecca is interesting. She’s kind of a bad person. Her letters to her daughter are fucking wild. But, we get to see struggles of being a mother through her. However, even while loving the child more than anything, you can still wonder about what could have been. You can still grieve the life that you no longer get to have. We also get to see the lengths a mother would go through for her child and how she may rationalize that choice as well. It’s heartbreaking how easily and desperately Rebecca clings to her reasoning behind what she’s doing because it’s the only way to keep going forward.

What exactly is going on with Moonflower isn’t exactly explained. It can be inferred and I’m going with vampire that dogs happen to like. But it’s up for the reader to choose what they believe. All we know for sure is dogs follow around and she has to live off of blood like her own. I didn’t really find myself needing the details, I was more invested into the plot and how the characters rationalized their fuck ups.

Rebecca, after learning that her daughter needs to feed off blood, decides she’s just gonna go after pedophiles. She’s getting rid of a presence in the world that it would be better off without anyway and giving Moonflower what she needs. But life constantly on the road, unable to ever truly get to know anyone, isn’t really a life, is it? It’s just Rebecca and Moonflower. Their love for one another is strong, but not strong enough to stave off the loneliness and resentment that can build.

Donner is a FBI agent who struggles with alcoholism. Instead of working to solve his problems with his wife and two daughters, he just kind of leaves em. And because it’s easier to solve a problem that isn’t our own, he decides to chase this string of murders through the country for two years. We get to see as Donner slowly loses his mind and his grip on right vs. wrong. Honestly, I spend the entire book routing for his death. He consistently makes the wrong choice and I think he’s kind of dumb.

Blood like Mine definitely has its flaws, but it was such a quick and fun read. Jeeze, it was so fun. It ties in cat and mouse detective stories with vampirism horror. What isn’t there to love?

I’d love to know your thoughts on the book as well. Was it as fun as I thought! Did you spot some issues I haven’t? Let me know!