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A review by veronica87
Blood Lines by Angela Marsons
3.0
Finished another Kim Stone book and while I like what I've read so far, I can't join the ranks of the many who rave about this series. I'd need to see more character development, and not just for the MC, for that to happen.
Dr. Alex Thorne, the sociopathic nemesis from the second book, makes her presence felt again which, considering she's locked up at a women's facility, is quite a feat. Frankly, her POV chapters felt like a wash-rinse-repeat of her machinations in the earlier book and I simply started skipping over them completely. And you know what? I didn't feel the rest of the story suffered at all from my decision. There was simply nothing new to see there, folks.
There are matters with Kim's mother that she has to attend to and which pull on her usual tunnel vision focus. It really bugs me how mental illness is being handled in this series as it pertains to Kim's mother. I get that she did a terrible thing. I get that Kim still holds a lot of anger over it. But her mother isn't evil. She's a schizophrenic with delusional thought processes. Untreated, as she must have been when Kim and Mikey were kids, schizophrenics experience an impaired reality that nevertheless feels very real to them. Kim is smart enough to know the difference between mental illness and true evil. It's presentations like this that keep a stigma on mental illness and having worked in the field for 20 years it just rubs me the wrong way.
As for the murder mystery du jour, it was interesting and I did enjoy having some more focus on Dawson again. However, I once again felt that the motivation for the killer was a bit of a stretch...or maybe not so much the motivation itself but the choice of victims. I don't know, it seems like the author tries too hard to make it always be the least likely (and most improbable, most unbelievable) person in all these books.
Dr. Alex Thorne, the sociopathic nemesis from the second book, makes her presence felt again which, considering she's locked up at a women's facility, is quite a feat. Frankly, her POV chapters felt like a wash-rinse-repeat of her machinations in the earlier book and I simply started skipping over them completely. And you know what? I didn't feel the rest of the story suffered at all from my decision. There was simply nothing new to see there, folks.
There are matters with Kim's mother that she has to attend to and which pull on her usual tunnel vision focus. It really bugs me how mental illness is being handled in this series as it pertains to Kim's mother. I get that she did a terrible thing. I get that Kim still holds a lot of anger over it. But her mother isn't evil. She's a schizophrenic with delusional thought processes. Untreated, as she must have been when Kim and Mikey were kids, schizophrenics experience an impaired reality that nevertheless feels very real to them. Kim is smart enough to know the difference between mental illness and true evil. It's presentations like this that keep a stigma on mental illness and having worked in the field for 20 years it just rubs me the wrong way.
As for the murder mystery du jour, it was interesting and I did enjoy having some more focus on Dawson again. However, I once again felt that the motivation for the killer was a bit of a stretch...or maybe not so much the motivation itself but the choice of victims. I don't know, it seems like the author tries too hard to make it always be the least likely (and most improbable, most unbelievable) person in all these books.