The Weight of Blood

A Novel

By: Laura McHugh

Narrated by: Dorothy Dillingham Blue, Shannon McManus, Sofia Willingham

Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's Summary

For fans of Gillian Flynn, Scott Smith, and Daniel Woodrell comes a gripping, suspenseful novel about two mysterious disappearances a generation apart.

The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane's mother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see. Lucy's family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own. Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family's influence, Lucy - darkly beautiful as her mother was - is always thought of by those around her as her mother's daughter. When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the two lost girls - the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn't save - and sets out with the help of a local boy, Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri's death.

What Lucy discovers is a secret that pervades the secluded Missouri hills, and beyond that horrific revelation is a more personal one concerning what happened to her mother more than a decade earlier.

The Weight of Blood is an urgent look at the dark side of a bucolic landscape beyond the arm of the law, where a person can easily disappear without a trace. Laura McHugh proves herself a masterly storyteller who has created a harsh and tangled terrain as alive and unforgettable as the characters who inhabit it. Her mesmerizing debut is a compelling exploration of the meaning of family: the sacrifices we make, the secrets we keep, and the lengths to which we will go to protect the ones we love.

©2014 Laura McHugh (P)2014 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

"In this clever, multilayered debut, McHugh deftly explores the past of an Ozark Mountain family… with plenty to hide and the ruthlessness to keep their secrets hidden…. This is an outstanding first novel, replete with suspense, crisp dialogue, and vivid Ozarks color and atmosphere." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Debut novelist McHugh comes out swinging with this gripping tale set in the Ozarks of Missouri…. Her prose will not only keep readers turning the pages but also paints a real and believable portrait of the connections, alliances, and sacrifices that underpin rural, small-town life in Henbane." ( Library Journal)

Not too bad but you have to pay attention.

This is a good but not great book. There are two major characters and two plot lines so it gets confusing if you do not pay attention. The book jumps back and forth between the two just about every chapter so you have to figure out where you are in time. Since there is one narrator and she does not change her voice that much between the two women characters (mother and daughter) you find yourself trying to figure out what story line you are listening to. They are related but not the same. Most of the other characters are in both so it can be even more confusing. This might be better a better kindle than audible book for that reason.

Weighty Hype Unfulfilled

Lila came to Henbane under duplicitous circumstances, disappearing from a seemingly happy life. Present day daughter Lucy searches for clues to her friend's murder and mother's past. The characters in this backwoods, gritty story are well drawn out and McHugh's writing style is fluid and easy. The first 3/4 of the book kept my attention and enjoyed the narrator for Lila (Shanon McManus?). Lucy's story was mildly immature and didn't care for the narrator's voice. While waiting for the final big reveal, the book ended. Oops, hate it when that happens. Found this entertaining, but cannot hold a candle to "Winter's Bone".

Winter's Bone & Gone Girl--NOT!

Okay, so the protagonist is a young girl living in the Ozarks. Long ago, her mother disappeared without explanation. Don't buy the hype -- while mildly entertaining, the quality of the writing, the sophistication of the plot (including way too much "young romance"), and the depth of character development compare poorly with Woodrell and Flynn. Not a BAD read, but setting up the listener to expect another Winter's Bone or Gone Girl didn't do McHugh any favors.

Distinctive story well told, but ending is iffy

A bit spoilery - Proving that Chris Bohjalian isn't the only one who can write well about the forced prostitution of women. A decent thriller with plenty of atmosphere, but I felt the ending pulled its punch and the villain (who is obvious and there is no twist; he is who he is) gets no real punishment. As a matter of fact, the slavery of young women appears to just go on. And not just the girls who are sold for sex, many of the women in town are equally in bonds and cannot stop what's happening. One thing that bugged me was that the two narrators who take the alternate perspectives of Lucy and Lila sounded too much alike. If I let my attention wander I sometimes couldn't tell which was which. Really, would it be so hard to find another woman who doesn't sound like a little girl?

Nancy Drew in the Ozarks

The author had an interesting premise for a mystery with a potentially atmospheric setting. But she failed to fulfill that promise through uneven pacing and mediocre character development. Using the mother-daughter narrative lines to relate two separate disappearances allowed us to experience the mysteries of both, but also formed a relentlessly symmetric feel to the whole, right down to the father-boyfriend connections. These four characters were so similar as to be interchangeable, and all of the supporting characters remained flat. There was no sense of time passing because the two story lines sounded exactly alike. Clues dropped too early placed the reader so far ahead in the plot that the effect was of impatience for the characters to catch up rather than feeling the tension of a plot thickening.

There should have been a much darker tone to a story filled with such nasty goings-on in a region that is close minded and superstitious. Especially since the community supposedly thought of the first vanished woman as a witch, just because she appeared from the exotic planet of Iowa. But the tone was not dark, and the residents of the small town just came across as rude, not fearfully superstitious. At one point as Lucy is digging into her mother’s mystery, she made a “Nancy Drew” reference to herself, and that encapsulated what I found wrong with this story – a YA level plot trying to be grown up. I pushed through to the end, but it felt like a push with an ultimately disappointing ending.

Poor Man's "Winters Bone"

Based on the reviews I thought this would be good. It's average at best. I don't see the hype about Ozarks as this could have been anywhere. Performance was so-so. I wouldn't recommend unless this was drastically on sale.

Totally maddeing.

Even if it had not been revealed early on, the reader would still easily figure out the "truths" (that it takes everyone else in the book forever to piece together) pretty much from the start. There are absolutely no surprises in this book - not because I'm an expert at anticipating plot twists, but apparently that was the author's intention. Tell the reader everything, then let them sit back while the bumbling characters trip over each other trying to sort it out themselves without ever employing any sort of logic.

If that sense of "come on, figure it out!!" that persists through the whole book weren't annoying enough, the book is filled with phrases like "she considered telling him, but couldn't find the words" or "she wanted to tell him what she'd found, but thought better of it" for absolutely no reason. If any of the characters had actually talked to each other like normal people do in the real world, this book would have been over by the end of the first chapter. Instead, everyone inexplicably chooses silence, thus accepting some horrible fate when a simple explanation could have solved everything from the beginning.

My last complaint would be the overly-stereotypical country-folk. This book claims to be set very near where I'm from, and they did get certain things right. The old wives tales about the shape in the middle of a persimmon seed predicting the winter, or the way a pendant swings predicting the gender of a baby - I'll give you that. But everyone eating squirrel and possum?? C'mon.

YA Novel with grown up pretensions

What disappointed you about The Weight of Blood?

At first I was drawn into the story; however, it quickly developed into a YA novel with grownup crimes. The teenage romance was boring. I felt as if I was reading Nancy Drew discovers sex crimes. Also, I found it hard to detemine the time frame of the actions: when was Lila the victim; when is Lucy a teenager? The ending was very deus ex machina - a tornado which blows away all the loose ends. I would not recommend this to any of my reading group.

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

The persistent little girl voice that seem to dominate all the characters.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I think the author has talent. However, this book was marketed as a mystery/thriller/gothic and I just got young adult / teenage angst.

No Gillian Flynn

I've seen comparisons between this book and those written by Gillian Flynn. In my estimation there is simply no comparison. Except the references to Missouri. It was OK, but the story was not tight,and some characters seemed to dissolve from the narrative with no resolution. If someone really wants to get a sense of sourthern Missouri and the culture of the Ozarks they should read Daniel Woodrell. There is no one who captures it better.

Uncle Creep's Mountain Girls

Ms. McHugh has written an excellent first novel, a story told from the perspective of multiple narrators, but primarily by a mother and a daughter, with related story lines 17 years apart in time. The novel has one of the most despicable villains in all of recent literature.

The eponymous quote:
"You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There's no forsaking kin but you can't help when kin forsakes you or when strangers come to be family."
*****

Using a suspicious mountain town with an incredibly seedy underside as her backdrop, I believe Ms. McHugh accomplished exactly and outstandingly what she intended. Blood versus Heart. Two female protagonists related to ambiguous, weak-spined male thread to villain (one by blood, one by marriage), playing with the variations in between, including the exploitation of young females.

The main characters are pretty well developed, but the story and the structure win the day here.

I'd say 4.5 stars, but I'll give it 5 because I didn't want to stop listening before I finished and I was sorry that it ended.

The narrators were all top notch.