Not By Blood - Chris Narozny

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

Are we all stuck in other people’s stories, having them define who we are? Even to ourselves?

Nothing is how Tina thought it was. Nobody is who they are supposed to be, least of all her.

When she gets a call from her brother in the dead of night, it seems like all the others that have come before. He’s holed up in some stash house and needs his big sister to come to the rescue. But when she gets there, he is nowhere to be found. She does however stumble across a dead guy, and it doesn’t look like natural causes.

Just as she’s about to dial 911, she gets a text that reads “Shhhh…”

After searching through her brother’s things, Tina decides to go home and regroup before beginning her search in earnest. But things at home are not how she left them. Her husband has been the victim of a hit and run, after he too snuck out in the middle of the night without notifying his spouse.

From the moment Tina gets into a cab to meet her brother until the final page, the author amps up the tension one agonizing notch at a time, leaving the reader to keep up a dizzying pace so as not to miss a thing!

Footnote: Full disclosure, I figured out who the villain was before the big reveal. But it’s sometimes more about the journey than the destination, right?

My thanks to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and the author for the advanced readers copy.

Book Pairing(s): This Story Is A Lie by Tom Pollock, He Started It by Samantha Downing, Girl Gone Mad by Avery Bishop