I had better hopes for this. It started off strong with a lot of suspense and I liked the city life to small town transition for Claire and Noah. I also really felt like Noah was definitely justified in his actions however bad they were.

I 100% shipped Claire and Lincoln! I’m really happy the book ended when they were in good terms again and I hope that in their universe Amelia and Noah got their happy ending too seeing as she’s free of her family.

I was quite disappointed in the ending. I know this is a medical thriller so I was expecting some medical explanation for the murders and why they happen every 100 years or so but the final decision that it’s some random bacteria that a secret pharmaceutical giant is investigating is a little underwhelming.

I liked the book and I adore Tess’s writing but this book took me so so long to read (months) and I most likely won’t be reading this again. I do recommend if you like medical thrillers though - it’ll definitely get you thinking at times and the attacks of aggression are interesting to read about.

I've no idea how I came by this book, the first I've read by Gerritsen. It's a slow-burn thriller that frequently lapses into body horror as members of the adolescent population of a Maine lakeside town erupt into unpredictable violence.

As the town's doctor Claire Elliott races to find the cause of this aggression, red herrings and false trails pop up every so often, only to be demolished by scientific evidence and the latest savage teen attack.

It's all highly-crafted, the emphasis on scientific method is refreshing, and it all gets jolly exciting towards the end, but this book never truly engaged me. All the characters just seem to whine a lot. Secondary mysteries - which police officer is leaking information to the press, or who is writing poison pen letters about Claire Elliott - are either trivial, or just left unresolved. There's a troublemaking reporter who fades out of the story without even causing much in the way of trouble. When Claire and another character see a "phenomenon" in the lake, Claire comments that she's seen something like this before, but then seems completely surprised the next time the subject comes up.

The resolution, when it comes, seeks to contrive a human villain behind a natural outbreak, and it feels so tacked-on that you have to wonder whether Gerritsen's publisher insisted on it. The villain in question is highly unconvincing and frankly half-hearted, and also whines a lot, though at least has the decency to keep it to their interior monologues.

If you like your thrillers tinged with a little horror, there's a lot to enjoy in Bloodstream's atmospheric wintry Maine adventure, but it's probably not worth going out of your way searching for a copy.

I haven't read/listened to the unabridged version of this book. This abridgment raised several questions in my mind while listening to it. Many times I felt as it I had missed some vital information as the story progressed. This left me completely unsatisfied and other the story as a whole.

This was a great suspense mystery. Gerristen's medical background makes this story even creeper.

Would've been a four star as I found the book fairly engaging, but the end annoyed me. Claire Elliot is the main character, we see most of the book through her eyes, she is the key figure pushing for answers. And yet at the end of book (minor spoilers about how the end is handled rather than story specifics)

Spoiler

a man is given the answers and thinking about them, rather than her? She will just presumably find out the whole answers to the mystery at some other point when she's had a little rest? Indeed even the final paragraphs are given to the man in question!

It felt rather rushed, which was a shame as it was quite enjoyable if not super exceptional up to that point.

I've loved most of the Tess Gerritsen books I've read, and this one is no exception. It's an intense science / medical thriller with a female lead. One note is that the violence is way more intense and scary in this book than in her previous titles - it stressed me WAY out. There's something in this small town in Maine that's making kids violent, and somehow the kids being the violent ones made this scarier than most. I found myself closing the book for a few seconds to take a deep breath after some chapters.

Very readable, but would prefer reading a Tess Gerritsen where the lead character doesn't feel obliged to snog someone!