All These Bodies by Kendare Blake | ARC Review

Sixteen bloodless bodies. Two teenagers. One impossible explanation.

Summer 1958—a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes—even in their beds—their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.

September 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.

Michael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town. He never imagined that the biggest story in the country would fall into his lap, or that he would be pulled into the investigation, when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to.

As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

I am officially spooked™

“All these bodies without blood.”

Our narrator is a 17-year old future journalist named Michael who recounts his view of The Bloodless Murders case. The one person at the scene of the crime declares that they’ll only tell their story to him and him only — for some unknown reason.

These murders have been terrorizing the whole country and now the case of the century is at the hands of Michael. He just needs to prove that Marie – the suspect – was only the accomplice and the true murderer is still out there. Easy.

Except… sometimes the facts aren’t as easy as they’re made it out to be and Michael soon discovers that.

“Tell the truth and shame the devil. I always thought that would be easy. But what do you do when the truth that you’re faced with also happens to be impossible?”

Michael as a narrator was… interesting to say the least. I’m impressed at how he was able to separate his emotions from the horrors he saw at times like wow I could never.

But also sometimes he could be such an idiot like if someone was literally pointing a gun at you and about to shoot you — when you manage to get away the first thing you do is tell the cops/parents right??? MICHAEL DIDNT DO THAT🤡 and its not like he was threatened or anything by them, he just decided not to tell anyone?? * sigh *

That was probably the only really stupid decision there well that and him wanting to break a murderer out of prison

I must admit that one thing I did find done well was the murder mystery being pretty spooky and interesting — but at the same time, it was also kind of boring?? I don’t know if that makes sense but that’s how I felt. It was really easy to guess who the culprit was and this is coming from someone who sucks at guessing that.

And the ending to it all was really underwhelming to be honest. That ending didn’t reveal everything clearly and actually left me with more questions than answers.

Anyways overall this was pretty decent. I’ve read way better mysteries but this wasn’t bad.

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Many thanks Harper Collins Canada for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!