Three Chicks and Their Books: Release Day Blitz: Thicker Than Blood by Madeline Sheehan and Claire C. Riley

A true friendship never dies.

Leisel and Evelyn lost everything. Husbands. Families. Friends. Lives that made sense. All they had left was each other, and a friendship that could withstand anything…

Even an apocalypse.

Until one fateful night, the marginal safety they’d come to rely on comes to a vicious and brutal end. With the help of Alex & Jami, both unlikely allies, Leisel and Evelyn are able to escape their shattered sanctuary only to find themselves face-to-face with a much altered, much crueler life where they have to find the way—and the will—to stay alive in a world they no longer recognize.

Traveling across a broken and infection-ridden country; the road-weary group are pitted against endless violence, improbable circumstances, and the ultimate loss. Everything comes at a price—especially safety, the cost of which could very well strip them of the one thing they’ve tried so hard to cling to: their humanity.

Yet along with all the trials they’re forced to endure, there’s also hope in the form of love. Having loved Leisel from afar, Alex attempts to put the pieces of her fractured heart back together.

But in such a savage world, is there room for love?

In a place of nightmares-made-reality, where the living should be feared far more than the dead, an unbreakable friendship and a love amongst all odds can mean the difference between life and death.

There are friends…

And then there are Leisel and Evelyn.

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23573808-thicker-than-blood?from_search=true

4.5 Stars by Bill Downey (Lisa’s hubs)

“Your old life is gone. Your memory of it and all the memory you had in your previous life is no longer. It’ll come back some day, sure, but it’s best not to think of it at all. Just let it go now and never look back.”

I loved Thicker than Blood by Madeline Sheehan and Claire C. Riley. It’s not my usual reading genre but as a lifelong zombie fan and a huge fan of Sheehan’s work I went in with an open mind.

This is a gritty, so real you can taste it, dystopian horror romance centered around best friends Leisel and Evelyn. They have a deep, loving bond that only grows stronger as they have to struggle to survive loss after loss in a nightmarish world gone to hell. The Infection has taken over and turned the dead into blood thirsty rotting savages. The infected are not the main story here but just a backdrop for the human tragedy of losing everything you know; your way of life, your family and friends and through the day to day struggle to survive realizing that most remaining living humans are more blood thirsty than the infected.

I must say one thing that really repulsed and insulted me as a man was the disrespectful way the male populous was portrayed as one track minded, always thinking with our dicks, only caring where our next piece of ass was coming from mentality even when facing the end of the world. Just Kidding! That’s exactly how we would be and that angle is part of what I found to make this book cut to your core real.

This is how I visualized the apocalypse with everyone having to fend for themselves, the old cliché of only the strong surviving never more true, a complete loss of basic humanity. How far would one go for food? (Imagine the things you would be forced to eat if you were starving) What about water, clothes, medicine, any basic necessity that you’ve taken for granted? Just how unbearable would it be if there was no one to stop the cruel from taking what they want?

We see how having that one person who is your rock by your side, even and especially in the worse possible situation, can make us strong enough to put enough of our pieces back together to live. And as long as we can live there is hope. I’m giving this one 4 ½ Bloody Stars, don’t be afraid – Read it!