Blood Sugar by Sascha Rothchild

Author: Sascha Rothchild

Title: Blood Sugar

Publisher: Trapeze

Published: 2022

Pages: 336

Genre: Thriller

 

     She's accused of four murders. She's only guilty of three... When Ruby was a child growing up in Miami, she saw a boy from her school struggling against the ocean waves while his parents were preoccupied. Instead of helping him, Ruby dove under the water and held his ankle down until he drowned. She waited to feel guilty for it, but she never did. And, as Ruby will argue in her senior thesis while studying psychology at Yale, guilt is sort of like eating ice cream while on a diet - if you're already feeling bad, why not eat the whole carton? And so, the bodies start to stack up. Twenty-five years later, Ruby's in an interrogation room under suspicion of murder, being shown four photographs. Each is a person she once knew, now deceased. The line-up includes her husband Jason. She is responsible for three of the four deaths... but it might be the crime that she didn't commit that will finally ensnare her.

     Over the last few years, I've been lucky enough to read so many great thrillers from authors hailing from every corner of the globe. Which I'm not going to lie, has been great but it also means that I have come to expect certain things to crop up time and again. Finding something that feels a bit more original can be a little tricky. But when I came across Rothchild's debut novel It sounded like I may have come across something that was going to breach those feelings. A book that whilst the synopsis sounds a little familiar could still bring a new take and hopefully plenty of surprises along the way.   

     So it was now time to make the acquaintance of Ruby. A woman who from the outside seems to have a fair normal life all things being considered. But the outside is not where we have come to settle when it comes to this lead. We are locked inside the room with someone who many of the general public would probably consider a terrifying psychopath.  And whilst it is true that ruby's path is definitely on the darker side of life that does not by any means mean she is unlikeable. Far from it in fact. She comes across as someone who is witty and charming. She knows exactly what she wants from life it's just that things have a nasty habit of not quite working out how she thinks they should. It is only then that her ability to compartmentalize comes into play. After all in her eyes what she has done is not wrong she is merely bringing a little justice to her world. It's hardly her fault that karma is just far too slow on the uptake. Now Ruby is not really someone who gets off on killing others it just happens to be a very convenient means to an end. And as I spent more time with her the more her logic is hard to fault. Whilst I would not advocate for killing others sometimes we all like to imagine that these wolves in sheep's clothing that inhabit our worlds could come to a very abrupt end. 

     This is a book that definitely grabbed me within the first few pages. Rothchild has created not only a character but a book that wraps you up in the warm Miami sun and lures you into its deeper and darker underbelly. I get the feeling that many of the situations that her anti-hero finds herself are all too familiar to some. It is however that action and length she is willing to go to that do not occur in the real world. I found myself willing her forward in her need to set the world straight. A guilty pleasure of the fictional world that I'm all too happy to indulge in. We want our anti-heroes to do what ether we can't or through moral objection will not. Authors like Rothchild allow us to indulge in such thoughts without feelings of guilt getting in the way. She has done this by crafting a tale where we are never really left in some sort of moral grey area. Both perpetrator and victims are perfectly chosen to elicit the exact reaction she hopes for.  And as such this turned out to be a book that I devoured as quickly as my schedule would allow for. 

     I think it is safe to say that this is definitely one of my favorite books of the year. we have a protagonist that is not only funny and forthright but some who in some strange way is very relatable. She is a killer that we would happily cheer on to succeed. But who also has a great deal of humanity still intact. She is never unnecessarily cruel and is someone who clearly cares a great deal for those she holds dear. It is in the end a book that I can wholeheartedly recommend.