The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

by:   Laura McHugh
published by:  Spiegel and Grau
publish date:  March 11, 2014

The Dane family's roots tangle deep in the Ozark Mountain town of Henbane, but that doesn't keep sixteen-year-old Lucy Dane from being treated like an outsider. Folks still whisper about her mother, a bewitching young stranger who inspired local myths when she vanished years ago. When one of Lucy's few friends, slow-minded Cheri, is found murdered, Lucy feels haunted by the two lost girls-the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn't protect. Everything changes when Lucy stumbles across Cheri's necklace in an abandoned trailer and finds herself drawn into a search for answers. 

Yesterday on my post about Wiley Cash's This Dark Road to Mercy I talked about books that blur the line between Adult Literature and YA.  This is another one of these books.  It'll be found in the Adult section of the bookstore, but the young age of the characters will make it accessible to YA readers.  Again, this is one of the books that I think will help YA readers transition in to Adult Literature without it being too scary. 

The Weight of Blood tells the story of the Dane family in a small Ozark town.  Sixteen year old Lucy Dane is just beginning to learn the dark side of her family history.  When her friend Cheri goes missing no one is very interested, but when her body shows up, it becomes the talk of the small town.  Lucy begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together and find out that Cheri's death may be closely related to her own mother's  disappearance 15 years earlier.  

I thought this was a great book.  It was a very well written first novel by Laura McHugh.  I'm excited to read more from her in the future.