A nice book with a good plot. The only thing I had difficulty getting over was how much it felt similar to other DI novels.

This is book #5 is the Katie McGuire series. I have read the previous books in the series, but it has been a while so it took myself a while to remember the different characters. I have enjoyed some of the other books in the series so was keen to read this one. It can be read as a standalone book as past events from the other books have been explained well.

Katie is investigating the deaths of 23 horses and also the death of a nun. It does go straight into the horses deaths, which was quite shocking to be honest and not everyone may want to read about this subject. The actual ‘crime’ side of the story was quite interesting and I enjoyed Katie, as in the other books, being the lead in investigating this. Katie’s personal life comes into this quite a bit and does follow on from the previous book in the series. Personally, her life is a bit of ‘trainwreck’ and she doesn’t always seem to have the best judgement of things, but I do really like her character!

It is quite gory and graphic, but if you’ve read the other books in the series you’ll realise they are too! I did enjoy the book and it ended leaving it set up for the next book in the series!

dnf at 12%

At that point, I had learned

- that Katie had a miscarriage a while ago
- she is now pregnant again
- but not by her boyfriend but by a neighbor with whom she had a one-night-stand during a 'it's complicated' phase of their relationship
- neighbor was also a violent asshole
- he still jumped in front of a bullet for her and is now dead
- she has not yet told bf about the pregnancy
- but she knows she has to
- but she can't
- got a recap of all the previous cases Katie solved
- she really can't tell him about the pregnancy
- half of the people involved in previous cases now have a vendetta against Katie personally because she alone caught them
- more about horse-breeding, race-horses and the laws about that than I ever wanted to know
- she really can't tell the bf
- the whole team are casual racists
- she is pregnant
- and it's not her bf's
- like did we mention that?
- she also is scared of what he'll say if she tells him about it
- so she doesn't tell him

There's also a case but it doesn't feel like the author cares much about it.

Blood sisters by Graham Masterton.
In a nursing home on the outskirts of Cork, an elderly nun lies dead. She has been suffocated. It looks like a mercy-killing - until another sister from the same convent is found viciously murdered, floating in the Glashaboy river.
The nuns were good women, doing God's work. Why would anyone want to kill them? But then a child's skull is unearthed in the garden of the nuns' convent, and DS Katie Maguire discovers a fifty year old secret that just might lead her to the killer... if the killer doesn't find her first.
This was a really enjoyable read with good characters. I was surprised with how it ended. 5*. Netgalley and head of zeus.