Alison has it all. A doting husband, adorable daughter, and a career on the rise – she’s just been given her first murder case to defend. But all is never as it seems…
Just one more night. Then I’ll end it.
Alison drinks too much. She’s neglecting her family. And she’s having an affair with a colleague whose taste for pushing boundaries may be more than she can handle.
I did it. I killed him. I should be locked up.
Alison’s client doesn’t deny that she stabbed her husband – she wants to plead guilty. And yet something about her story is deeply amiss. Saving this woman may be the first step to Alison saving herself.
I’m watching you. I know what you’re doing.
But someone knows Alison’s secrets. Someone who wants to make her pay for what she’s done, and who won’t stop until she’s lost everything….
Source | Format | Pages | Publisher | Genre | Publication Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Author | Signed Paperback | 269 | Varrak | Psychological Thriller | 2019 |
My thanks to Harriet Tyce who sent me a copy of Blood Orange translated to Estonian 🙂 I hadn’t read a thriller in my mother tongue for… well, wow…over a decade, for sure!
Blood Orange was exactly the kind of thriller that got my heart pumping. Nearly finished the book in one sitting, too… nearly.. instead, my body knocked me to sleep with only 14 pages to the end. I was bummed, but on the bright side there was some more chilling goodness for an extra day! 🙂
Alison… So successful, yet so fucked up. In the courtroom Alison is 100% professional. Once the doors of the courtroom close behind her, she turns into a proper mess of a human. She goes out with colleagues and drinks way too much, she has an affair with a colleague who’s likeability is quite questionable and all the while she has a therapist husband at home minding the young daughter. Mess, I tell ya!
But the story, wow, the story has a lot going on. Whilst we get to witness Alison’s nightly rendezvous, she is on a very intriguing murder case where the wife is blamed in killing her husband. Did she or didn’t she? Alison needs to know all the deets before she can step out as defence in this particular case. In addition, Alison starts to receive hints that someone knows exactly what kind of extracurricular activities she practices when she’s not at work and not at home. You want sauce? There’s a plenty of it in Blood Orange.
Interesting thing with the characters, too- they all feel a bit detached and none of them really warmed my heart. Alison’s husband was once contender for the – ah, you poor thing- but the way he spoke to Alison sometimes, pulling his therapist act at home, made me slightly suspicious of how nice of a man he really is. One thing for sure, he truly does step up for caring for his daughter whilst the mommy is getting her orifices filled with various liquids. ahem.
Not going to lie, this book intrigued me from start to finish and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was so much to unravel in this story in all 3 threads that are running through the book that I was hooked like a little fishy. Not to mention, a prologue quite like Blood Orange delivered? Damn, I was going to be on my toes trying to find out exactly what the hell.. and yet I never connected the dots until the big reveal at the end of the book! Boom!
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I think you had a better experience than me reading this novel. I couldn’t get over how unlikeable she was, it made me quite uncaring. BUT the novel did make an impression on me, I still think about this book whenever I hear or see blood oranges :-). Great review Liis.
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Yes! I saw your review/rating on Goodreads and I was so super worried so naturally proper lowered my expectations… Alison really is a very selfish character but the story itself- I think my brain just needed something like this that day to just entertain so it hit the spot 🙂 Thank you, m’lady! ❤
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Maybe you benifited from lower expecations, mine were sky high from all the praise.. and then she was so cringe-worthy ;-). I’m happy for you though that it worked out so great!
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Huh, very interesting premise! You simply describing the synopsis and waving the bait around had questions flitting through my head already. It’s also really cool you read the book in Estonian! I speak a second language too, but I’d be out of my league trying to analyze and review a book since I read exclusively in English. 😉
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Both covers are great. I love that you were sent a translated copy! I can’t imagine what it is like to read so much in a second language. It does sound like a chiller thriller! 👍✨
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