Blood-Tied

"A desperate crime, kept secret for 60 years... but time has a way of exposing the truth... Esme Quentin is devastated when her sister Elizabeth is beaten unconscious, miles from her home. Two days later Esme discovers that Elizabeth has a secret past."
I was intrigued by the description of the book and as it involves genealogy and is set in Shropshire (My home town), I just had to give it a go. It is a satisfying read with quite a few twists in the plot to maintain your interest. I did find that the first few pages were rather over descriptive and it felt a little as though the author had sprinkled it with adjectives to up the word count. Don't be put off by this, it does quickly settle into a good rhythm and soon becomes an easy and enjoyable read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Books Go Social for the opportunity to preview..

Esme's sister Elizabeth is attacked and left in a coma. As Esme seeks to find out why she unearths a decades old mystery.

I enjoyed this book & found its story telling perfectly adequate though not special. It is an ideal light read verging on a cozy crime style book.

The characters were not as well developed as I felt they could have been. We do get dribs and drabs of Esme's past but I never felt that any of this developed her into a rounded character that I could understand. I found some of her behaviour at odds with other actions. Her niece, Gemma, was even more strange. Why would anyone not move heaven & earth to discover what had happened to their Mother? Why would you totally disengage from your only family support whilst your Mother is in a coma?As the older person why did Esme not try to find common ground & not leave it so she didn't connect or support her niece for days on end?

There were some occasions where I felt the conclusions reached by Esme & her friend Lucy were a little unlikely & the connection quite tenuous. On other occasions she was definitely quite dense! However, this is fiction & as a reader I am happy to allow some leeway despite it grating slightly.

This is a debut book which was a good enough read. Perhaps the author's future books will settle a bit & she will get into her stride. I will certainly be prepared to give another one a try.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley

This is the first Wendy Percival book that I read and I loved it. The book does justice to the genre – Mystery. Till the end, the reader is still in suspense as to who was the perpetrator. As you read through the chapters, you realize that the mystery behind Liz’s past gets darker and murkier. Details are revealed but the question of whodunnit remains a mystery till the very end.

Esme sees a black Audi near her house and thinks of it to be one of the neighbor’s car. When another black Audi tries to ram her car, she again thinks of it to be her neighbor’s car. But what has Black Audi got to do with Elizabeth? Also, Esme is contacted by a client who wants her to research on a Canal, but halfway through her research, the client dismisses her for no reason. And what has that got to do with Elizabeth?

I loved the author’s writing style. The language is simple and easy to understand. Concepts are well defined. The story is smooth and flowing, it doesn’t go off track. There’s blackmail, an attempted murder, a murder and dark secrets – what else does a book in the genre of Mystery need!

The concluding chapters are interesting. Remember, this is where all the mystery is revealed. Apart from the whodunnit, there is a lot of familial relationships involved. The longing for a male heir, the love that a nanny has for a neglected child and the love that a mother has for her son’s illegitimate child, this book is a box full of surprises.

If you love to read a book full of surprises, mystery, and suspense, then Blood-Tied is THE book for you!

#Blood-tied #NetGalley

A well written historical novel. The mystery and the narrations are deep and bold. A good novel for intrigue lovers.

Family and intrigue. Don't they just go together so well? In this book they definetly do. This is the first of the series and i have read the next two also. All i can say is -buy this book!