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Friday, October 23, 2015

Book Review: Blood Red (Mundy's Landing #1) by Wendy Corsi Staub

Blood Red (Mundy's Landing #1)
by Wendy Corsi Staub
Paperback, 416 pages
September 29th 2015
by William Morrow
From New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub comes the first in a terrifying new series set in a small town with a sinister secret

The razor's gleaming blade slices effortlessly through skin and tendon, and he relishes the final anguished moments of his prey. There's only one thing he prizes more: their long, silken strands of red hair. But these women are merely stand-ins . . . a prelude to his ultimate victim.

Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley, Mundy's Landing is famous for its picturesque setting—and for a century-old string of gruesome unsolved murders. Rowan returned to her hometown years ago, fleeing a momentary mistake that could have destroyed her family. Life is good here. Peaceful. Until an anonymous gift brings Rowan's fears to life again.

The town's violent history was just the beginning. Soon everyone in Mundy's Landing will know that the past cannot be forgotten or forgiven—not until every sin has been paid for, in blood.

Rowan, wife of Jake Mundy, a direct descendant of two Mundys who settled in the new world, only to be arrested and hung for killing and cannibalizing others on a ship that only they and their three children survived. The children grew up to have children and so forth, and one descendant ended up being a hero.

This was not the only horrific crime committed in Mundy’s Landing; the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ murders happened in the 1900s. The town embraced this, hosting a convention where fans of murder and so forth attend close to the holidays. But all thought of past murders leave Rowan’s head when she gets a package delivered, one with burnt cookies wrapped in newspaper with a November 30th date. A date she almost succumbed to an affair with neighbor Rick Walker fourteen years before. They ended up just kissing and were interrupted, she burned cookies she was baking at the time. 

Thanks to some very strange incidents, we realize that Rowan is in danger...and some mysterious person called Casey is somehow involved, who appears to hate her and want her dead, plus is fixated on redheads with long hair (which she is, though she had her hair cut and dyed blond based on the suggestion of her hairdresser at the time). Casey kills a few redheads, one right in town, which brings a couple of NYPD detectives on the case who begin to zero in on Mundy’s Landing. 

I couldn’t related to Rowan’s guilt trip about something that was no more than a kiss. If it had been more, or she had a child due to a full blown gone to bed issue, then the cookies might be a source of fear? Plus the fact she friends the man she almost had the affair with on Facebook and goes to meet him…something I call not too bright if you want the husband never to find out. But the character, Casey, gives me the right amount of creeped-out and the story flows along. I can even see the town in my mind’s eye by the descriptions and the added flavor of the past horrors that this small town embraces for a convention. Mixing the macabre with suburbia equals as disturbia.

Need something to read for this time of year to give you a chill and maybe even make you lock those doors and windows…just in case? What better than Blood Red, a mixture of small town life and serial killer darkness; disturbia in all its glory.

I give Blood Red 4 sheep
Pamela Kinney

About the Author:
New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than eighty novels in a career that has spanned more than two decades. Under her own name, Wendy achieved New York Times bestselling status with her single title psychological suspense novels. Those novels and the women's fiction she writes under the pseudonym Wendy Markham have also frequently appeared on the USA Today, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookscan bestseller lists.

Wendy now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband of twenty-four years and their two children. A 1986 graduate of the State University of New York at Fredonia, she proudly delivered the keynote commencement address at her alma mater in May 2008, was a featured speaker at the 2011 Academic Convocation.

Having lost her mother and mother-in-law to breast cancer, she has been a vocal and active supporter of charitable causes such as Relay for Life, Support Connection, and the American Cancer Society. In September 2012, she was an Ovarian Cancer Awareness month national spokesperson for Avon’s Kiss and Teal campaign with the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation. As an animal rights advocate, she currently fosters cats and kittens for various rescue organizations in the metro New York City area.

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