Jen Blood offers a riveting canine loaded mystery, in her "The Darkest Thread". It was oh-so-obvious to this reader that Ms. Blood is a dog lover and it more than shows in her writing. The dogs were absolutely marvelous and brought to mind many four-legged loves from this reader's past. The pitbull, Casper, sounded amazingly like this readers daughter's American bulldog, also named Casper, and made me laugh until I cried with his antics. As a retired breeder and handler, former operator of a shelter/rescue, this reader found the doggy behavior spot on and truly appreciated the well-described dog descriptions. Characters could have used a bit more development in this reader's opinion; however, as the main characters were apparently introduced in a previous series, this reader cannot overly fault Blood for not developing the characters more fully as they likely have developed more since their original appearance in the earlier stories. Settings were absolutely spectacular, allowing this reader to fully visualize the mountain and surrounding forest and even gather a sense of how wet the area was. As an added bonus, there were very few grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, allowing this reader to remain completely engrossed in the tale Blood wove. The story itself is not a light read, by any means. No, this is a dark tale of serial murder, rape, and a hint of the supernatural. The supernatural aspect was not fully resolved by the end of the story, either, leaving many questions in this readers mind. This reader now wonders if Blood will have her search and rescue team make another trek back to this region.... This reader loves discovering new-to-me-writer's, especially ones she truly has a desire to read more from... and that was most definitely discovered in Jen Blood's writing! Her style is quite smooth and inviting to read; her voice is actually quite warm, given she is telling such a dark tale; her tale-telling captivated this reader right from the start - enough that I resented my need to sleep instead of continuing to read. Ms. Blood will definitely be appearing more often on this reader's bookshelves, and I highly recommend her. ** Review originally posted to Amazon reviews on May 9, 2017 and on Goodreads at the same date. **
