Saturday, April 2, 2011

Blood Harvest by S. J. Bolton


Image taken from shearersbookshop.com.au

Just finished reading this book today, and had to tell you all about it before I went to bed tonight. The other books I had read in the past couple of months, and just didn't get around to reviewing them until now.

"Blood Harvest" details the lives of three ordinary people: a ten year old boy, whose family has just moved into the quiet village of Heptonclough, a psychiatrist who is working with a patient living in the same village, and a priest who has just arrived to take on the parrish there, which has been left neglected for a few years. The novel describes how these three characters interact with each other, as weird happenings begin to occur. The boy keeps seeing a deformed child hanging around the church graveyard, beckoning his younger siblings to follow her. The patient of the psychiatrist, whose daughter had died in a fire three years ago, insists that her daughter is not dead, and that she comes back to haunt her. And the priest, while outwardly welcomed by members of the village, receives chilling and deadly cryptic messages to keep his nose out of learning about the town's past. Three seemingly different scenarios, yet they are all linked up as part of one big chilling murder mystery.

I bought this book purely by chance as I was finishing off Torment, and was desperate for a new book to read. I had never heard of S. J. Bolton before, nor had I ever heard any of the other books that she has written. But if she writes with the same mystery and suspense in this book as she does in her other ones, I am going to have to seek out her other books as well. She sets up a very intricate and elaborate plot, which all comes together nicely in one stunningly chilling conclusion (you will NEVER guess who the real killer is!)

All in all, it was a very enjoyable read.