Book Review: Thicker than Blood

Title: Thicker than Blood

Author: Elizabeth Aragon

Date: 2023

Quote: "The recent wave of gruesome deaths has cast a shadow over the peaceful community."

Madison has come back to her home town to work as a police detective. Right away she meets a boy she liked when they were teenagers, who ghosted away when his family applied pressure for him to find a richer girlfriend. He's still single. He still seems to like her. Can she trust him again?

For Madison, the only way to find out is to jump on him like a dog on a bone. Ethan seems to want one kiss for old time's sake. Madison tears off his clothes and drags him into bed, though he's willing enough. She discovers that making babies is fun, untrammelled by any thoughts that would occur to a real woman about what she's going to do with the baby, and they just keep flopping into bed over and over again. 

I don't believe it. I doubt that very many men would stay with a woman who offers no thrills of pursuit, who not only flops on the first chance but grabs the man. That may be the most popular male fantasy in chat rooms (when I researched half a dozen it certainly was), but if it satisfied them in real life, three-quarters of the female whining on Earth would either not exist or be redirected to other topics like the burdens of motherhood. But I don't believe for a minute that a woman gets into the fantasy the way we're told Madison does. She may act it out if she believes that's the way to catch a rich husband, but she has to know that when she's all that young and full of hormones is when the pills and gadgets fail. 

So I'm put off, although a person who enjoys reading about what's hard and what's wet would probably enjoy the numerous sex scenes. (I lose count. All I'll say about the sex-in-the-lake scene is that real people who've tried it agree that cold water does not enhance the sensations.) Meanwhile, although it seems as if seducing Ethan has become Madison's full-time career, she does manage to clean herself up and go to work occasionally. She tries to focus on "safe, boring" police work, but she just can't help noticing that Ethan's family, and even more the other rich family in town that his parents thought would be ideal for him to marry into, seem to be linked to the series of murders. 

There are improbable encounters between Madison and the girl his parents hoped Ethan would marry, in which she admits that she's not actually in love with Ethan but his parents paid her generously to try to come between him and Madison, then obligingly allows Madison to find a clue...I can believe an ex-girlfriend would tell a previous ex-girlfriend that she had to be paid to take any further interest in their mutual ex-byfriend, even if it's not true, but I find it hard to believe that either Ethan or the rich girl would just...oh, read the book if you want to find out what the author says they do. 

But I did laugh.The spirit of Romance, in the sense of unlikely events that at least make a lively story, will never die.