Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer

Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: December 29, 2015
Publisher: Kensington Teen
Source: Publisher
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Thomas Bellweather hasn’t been in town long. Just long enough for his newlywed mother to be murdered, and for his new stepdad’s cop colleagues to decide Thomas is the primary suspect.

Not that there’s any evidence. But before Thomas got to Garretts Mill there had just been one other murder in twenty years.

The only person who believes him is Charlotte Rooker, little sister to three cops and, with her soft hands and sweet curves, straight-up dangerous to Thomas. Her best friend was the other murder vic. And she’d like a couple answers.

Answers that could get them both killed, and reveal a truth Thomas would die to keep hidden…

Quite honestly, I thought most of this book was ridiculous. For various reasons. I’m incredibly disappointed because even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of the finale, Kemmerer’s Elementals series was really enjoyable for me, and I was excited to see what she came out with next. Thicker Than Water, however, was such a disappointment.

I love a good murder mystery, and Thicker Than Water started out as an intriguing one. The main character’s mother is murdered and the MC is a suspect. Sounds good, right? But unfortunately it wasn’t executed well at all.

My biggest issue with this book is that, once again, Kemmerer has a legion of male characters and less than a handful of females. This was a thing in the Elementals series as well, wherein the four brothers are really the main characters of the series and the female characters are “just” the love interests. This didn’t bother me in the beginning, but by the final book I started to get a bit fed up. But in that series, the brothers lived together and so it was understandable that they were around more. In Thicker Than Water, the female main character has a bunch of brothers as well, and hardly any female friends. She has one that I can recall, but we get hardly any scenes with them together. It was all about Thomas and Charlotte, rather than Charlotte as an individual.

So that annoyed me, and then there’s a twist towards the end that really threw me for a loop. I didn’t sign up for that.

Thicker Than Water is very much more of the same, which is a shame because I was looking forward to seeing Kemmerer branch out a bit more with her writing and stories. I’m glad it’s not a series (yet?) because I’m not sure I could handle more of this story that I would feel obligated to read.