Blood Sugar - Sascha Rothchild

Thrilller

Rating: 8/10

Many reviewers described the opening scene of this novel as disquieting, I thought it was genius.  That being said, this may not be a book for the faint of heart or sensitive of soul.

After her first kill, at the tender age of five, Ruby waited for guilt to set in.  But it never did. Not the first time or any of the times that would follow.

Ruby isn’t a sociopath; she feels empathy and sympathy.  She cries and laughs out loud and loves deeply. But she runs into trouble with an imbedded sense of justice with the belief that if she’s not going to exact it, who will?  It’s not like she’s an out-of-control homicidal maniac. Yes, she’s unrepentant, but you may find yourself hard pressed to blame her.

Now she finds herself in an interrogation room facing a lineup of four photos and a detective intent on tripping her up, exposing her guilt for the one death on his radar she’s not responsible for, that of her husband. It’s this room the reader returns to in-between Ruby’s reflections of how she got to this point in her life.

This structure provides plenty of suspense as the author reveals all the nuances of what makes Ruby tick.

This clever cat and mouse novel epitomizes the quote by Voltaire; “One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.”

A twisty and clever debut with a protagonist this reader couldn’t help but love!

Book Pairing(s):No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife by Ashley Winstead, Flicker In The Dark by Stacy Willingham