BLOODLINE

4 stars out of 5

Back in the '60s, when this book takes place, I'll cop to inhaling once or twice, but I never tried "acid." By the time I got a halfway through this book, though, I was imagining that this must be how it would have felt. At the very least, it's a pretty creepy story that, as I'm sure other reviewers have noted, is might be subtitled Rosemary's Baby meets The Stepford Wives.

After pregnant Minneapolis newspaper reporter Joan Harken is mugged, her boyfriend and father of the baby, Deck, convinces her to relocate to his insular hometown of Lilydale. Here, he insists, she'd be safe - and he assures her the local newspaper, although small, will give her the opportunity to earn the byline she's always craved. Despite a few misgivings about leaving big-city life, she agrees.

It doesn't take long, though, for her to realize something's not quite right, starting with the "friendliness" of all her neighbors - attention that soon begins to cross the line of intrusiveness once she realizes nothing she does or says escapes the knowledge of everyone who lives on her street (most notably Deck's parents, who are town VIPs). The situation gets even murkier when she begins to investigate the decades-earlier disappearance of a young boy; and spotting a too-familiar man from her Minneapolis past makes her wonder all the more what's really going on in this extremely close-knit town. When the townspeople begin to take unusual interest in her baby, Joan really starts to freak out.

Honestly, I didn't warm up to any of the characters (to begin with, any parents who would name their kid after their back porch have to be three bricks shy of a chimney). And although Joan has a few issues in her own past that cloud her present, she comes across for the most part as a paranoid wimp who won't stand up for herself. Still, the story is creepy and scary and I couldn't wait to find out what was really going on (hint: it's even creepier and scarier than I thought it would be). In short, it's a great diversion during these times of not being able to go much of anywhere. Thanks to Amazon First Reads for this one!

Bloodline by Jess Lourey (Thomas & Mercer, January 2021); 347 pp.