Thicker Than Blood
ARC provided to facilitate this review
A true friendship never dies.
Leisel and Evelyn lost everything. Husbands. Families. Friends. Lives that made sense. All they had left was each other, and a friendship that could withstand anything…
Even an apocalypse.
Until one fateful night, the marginal safety they’d come to rely on comes to a vicious and brutal end. With the help of Alex & Jami, both unlikely allies, Leisel and Evelyn are able to escape their shattered sanctuary only to find themselves face-to-face with a much altered, much crueler life where they have to find the way—and the will—to stay alive in a world they no longer recognize.
Traveling across a broken and infection-ridden country; the road-weary group are pitted against endless violence, improbable circumstances, and the ultimate loss.
Everything comes at a price—especially safety, the cost of which could very well strip them of the one thing they’ve tried so hard to cling to: their humanity.
Yet along with all the trials they’re forced to endure, there’s also hope in the form of love. Having loved Leisel from afar, Alex attempts to put the pieces of her fractured heart back together.
But in such a savage world, is there room for love?
In a place of nightmares-made-reality, where the living should be feared far more than the dead, an unbreakable friendship and a love amongst all odds can mean the difference between life and death.
There are friends…
And then there are Leisel and Evelyn.
Thicker Than Blood is a new collaboration from Madeline Sheehan and Claire C Riley. The post-apocalyptic theme of this book really appealed to me, and being a big fan of Madeline’s, I was eager to read this book.
I won’t lie, this book was a bit of a slow start for me. But every minute spent with these characters, in this world, was well worth it. Sheehan and Riley did an incredible job at depicting life in what literally has become a hell on Earth. The world they created is real, raw, and visceral. The reader is easily able to put themselves into the shoes of these characters. The writing is vivid, the descriptions perfect, and I wouldn’t be shocked if this was exactly how the “zombie apocalypse” played out. The sights, sounds, and even the smells detailed in this book are all to easy to imagine, and the characters’ suffering (and trust me, they’re suffering) bleeds from the pages straight into the heart of the reader.
Then there are the relationships. The bond Leisel and Evelyn share truly is something special. Throughout unimaginable circumstances, when the rest of civilization seems to be de-volving, the selflessness of their love for each other truly is a beacon in this horrifying new reality.
There is a lot going on in this book. In a world after the “zombie apocalypse”, in a place that is more Thunderdome than America, the action is constant, the environment brutal, simply reading about their constant fight to survive is exhausting. But above all else, rising above the terror and the heartache, is the overwhelming devotion in this story. Two best friends completely devoted to one another. A man devoted to the salvation of the woman he loves, and an entirely different human race devoted to their fight to stay alive.
You will definitely take this journey with Leisel and Evelyn. Each small victory will fill you with hope, and each setback will be a crushing blow. After a perfectly imperfect ending to this story, and an epilogue that is both heartwarming and heartwrenching, all that I could say when I finished this book was “Damn.”
Leave a Reply