Bloodstream

Although I think the conclusion could have been executed a bit more excitingly, I thoroughly enjoyed this creepy and fast paced thriller.I will agree with silenceiseverything about one thing: several of the characters were maddeningly stupid.Still, I can see myself reading this one again!

Interesting book. I thought I had read more Tess Gerritson, but found myself quite unfamiliar with her style. I know I've read Harvest too, and that was very good. I don't think this is probably her best book.

I really thought this was going to be a vampire book I started not to listen but the story was intriguing so I listeed great read

I enjoyed this. I have the audible version and listened to it while I was driving from NYC to Maryland. I had to sit in the car for about 20 minutes after I arrived so that I could hear the end!

I felt there were just too many changing and competing theories about what was happening as I went through the book. Also I personally found the nosebleed "clue" incredibly obvious. Also the whole thing only worked because (SPOILER ALERT!...) the company running the bloodtests was lying and as a reader you tend to take evidence like blood test results as indisputable so it was a bit of an unfair twist.Saying that it made me angry for the characters who were being unfairly treated for no apparent motive and it was pretty compelling so I would definitely recommend it to others but not as good as some of her other work I would say.

I thought I'd read all of Tess Gerritsen's books and was therefore delighted when I found one I hadn't read yet!

This was true Tess Gerritsen. From the first sentence, I was hooked! The book starts with a disturbing episode from the past and leaves the ending of that event on a cliffhanger...then picks it up again much later in the book, in the present.

The story is dark and disturbing and full of the usual twists and turns you expect in Tess's plots.

Yet another fantastic read!

Good medical thriller

I am a huge, self-confessed Tess Gerritsen fan. I love and adore her Rizzoli & Isles books (and the TV series which is totally different from the books, but the character interactions are great. The mysteries...not so much). So, I assumed that I would like Bloodstream. I assumed that I would LOVE Bloodstream after I finished the prologue. It (the prologue, I mean) was nail-bitingly creepy. I was seriously holding my breath while frantically clicking on the Kindle. I thought that the prologue would set the tone for the book. Ehhh, it didn't really happen that way. Again, this book starts off with a BANG!!! I think it may be one of the creepiest prologues from a mystery book that I've ever read. The chapters following the prologue were still plenty creepy and more than a little intriguing. In fact, the beginning chapters of Bloodstream reminded me heavily of a UK movie called The Children (totally recommended, by the way. It's creepy, underrated, and due to what happened in the movie, it will never be remade and subsequently ruined by American filmmakers). So much that I thought it was sort of going to go that way (which I really would've preferred). But it didn't. There were just too many things going on in this book. It's a parasite. No, it's evil. No, it's an actual person. No, it's the evil corporations. No, it's the parents' influece causing the kids to go violently crazy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Seriously, everything was packed in here. Every single excuse was packed in here. I understand that the point of mysteries is to keep you guessing, but it was just too much. And the resolution was very anti-climactic and the ending a bit abrupt. So much that I kept clicking the Kindle thinking "It can't really be over..." However, my main issue with Bloodstream was that I thought every single character in it was an idiot. That makes it REALLY hard to root for them. I understood why the teenagers were bratty (they were teenagers, therefore, are supposed to be bratty and then if you add in what's actually happening then it's sort of understandable), but all of the adults were pissing me off, too. They were acting worse than the children. So, I didn't feel a huge sense of remorse when they started getting picked off. I did give Bloodstream two stars instead of one because the premise was very intriguing and so promising (which was why the execution was so disappointing). Plus, it's Tess Gerritsen so you know the book was a huge page-turner. All I could think about in my 8AM college math class was how to get back to this book, so that's something. In the end, I thought that Bloodstream was just okay and I definitely liked all of the books in the Rizzoli and Isles series more than I liked this one.

I found this book in my basement and think I got it for Christmas one year. I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. The story is a medical thriller and is fast paced and filled with suspense. Not great literature, but a fun read.

Bloodstream has an interesting enough premise. Dr. Claire Elliot is a small town doctor who relocates to rural Maine with her son, Noah to shield him from big city violence. All is well in the town of Tranquility until one of Claire?s patients, a teen boy snaps in a very violent act. This is the first of many violent acts that the young people of Tranquility start to perpetrate. Claire investigates the situation and discovers that this sort of thing happens in Tranquility about twice a century, convincing her that this isn?t random, and something biological in nature is responsible.Unfortunately the novel doesn?t live up to the billing. The plot has massive holes and towards the ends starts to devolve into something implausible and not particularly interesting. The writing is not up to par with other of Gerritsen?s work. This is one that I would recommend staying away from.Carl Alves ? author of Blood Street

Tess Gerritsen writes excellent thrillers with nice complex characters, and I enjoy her books a lot. This one was no exception, but I was rather disappointed by a very "deus ex machina" ending. In the last 40 pages or so, the improbabilities keep piling up and it all gets a bit much - the way the (positive) ending was achieved left me feeling rather cross, you know, " do you think I'm stupid or something, Gerritsen?"?

This book has a storyline straight out of a Stephen King novel, about a small lakeside town with an unexplained eruption of violence from local teenagers. Dr. Claire Elliot, a newcomer to the town, is at the center of the controversy and soon discovers that this isn't a new thing for the town. There's a history of unexplained violence ... dating back several hundred years! The love story feels a bit superfluous, and the ending is very rushed - but I still enjoyed the book. Its a fun and thrilling chronicle of murdering madness in a small town.

Little did I know how many books this author has produced since she wrote this one! I pulled this out of the stacks in the library because I like "medical suspense." I liked the flow of the novel and I'm glad to find a "new" author, for me, who is well acquainted with the medical field. (I LOVE reading what other people think of an author's work---one man's meat, etc.)

READ IN DUTCH

This is one Tess Gerritsen earlier work, not part of her Rizzoli and Isles series.



A lot happens in this book, but it wasn't very easy for me to connect to the story. I wanted to really like this book (as I know a lot of Tess Gerritsen fans), and I thought it started of great, with a high level of creepiness.



But then, the story lost me a bit. There's something going on, indeed, and every five pages, there's another explanation for it. I understand that you want to distract the reader and keep him/her guessing on what exactly happens next, but if you spell literally every option out for me, I tend to get a bit annoyed.



It was however an enjoyable read.

One of the older Gerritsen thrillers, and I liked it a lot. The story is about the aggressive behaviour of the teenage inhabitants of a small village.Gerritsen knows how to build up tension very well. The only thing is, at the end all the bad people have died, and all the good people survive, which is slightly predictable and maybe a bit easy for the author. It leaves the reader with a very satisfied feeling, however.

Bloodstream is Tess Gerritsen's 11th stand-alone novel. The action is set in the small town of Tranquility, Maine, where Dr Claire Elliott has relocated with her son, Noah, to remove him from less-than-desirable influences in Baltimore. After the discovery of some human bones at nearby Locust Lake, followed by a shooting at the high school Noah attends, Claire begins to suspect something is affecting the behaviour of the local youth population. Are they being affected by drugs, or is it some natural phenomenon? Claire even begins to wonder about a parasitic infestation. But the town displeased with her investigations, and Claire starts to feel persecuted. Tess Gerritsen is the master of medical detective drama, and once again shows her skill and knowledge in this novel. Characters, dialogue and plot are all excellent, and there are a few twists to keep it exciting. Another Gerritsen winner.

Dr. Claire Elliott thought that moving to rural Maine would be a way to get her life back together and to protect her son from the unsavory influences he had in Baltimore. But after months of living in Tranquility she has yet to be accepted by the locals... and strange things are happening. Teens are becoming suddenly violent, unable to control their aggression... and the consequences are deadly. Claire is certain that there is a biological cause... but can she find it in time to save the town... and her own son? This medical thriller drew me in with its detailed setting and likable characters. Although the premise is fairly far-fetched, Gerritsen has talent in creating creepy, tension-filled scenes. I didn't want to put it down!

I think I must be turning into a book snob. It seems that these days I can't read a thriller without rolling my eyes & being extremely critical of the plot line. I suppose I just prefer realism & maybe I need to stick to that type of novel. But I do enjoy a good thriller now & then, so I keep coming back to them. But this was another one that just seemed too farfetched to be even mildly believable. It was also fairly formulaic. The "heroine" of the story gets knocked unconscious, put behind the wheel of her car, & pushed into a lake. And surprise, surprise . . . she wakes up, frees herself from the car, & swims to the surface. Besides being totally unrealistic, that's a scene that's been written too many times previously. As a mild consolation, this was an abridged audiobook. As far as abridgments go, it seemed decent enough, but abridgments do tend to miss some of the depth of the story, which probably affected my overall enjoyment of this one.

Great author. Great book!

Have just read "Bloodstream" a second time and enjoyed it just as much as the first time. A nice fast-paced story!Not her best novel, but certainly highly readable!

My first and last Tess Gerritsen book. I thought that the plot was too far fetched. maybe if I'd read some of her earlier books I would have enjoyed this one more.

Not one of my favorites from Gerritsen, but it was still a good read. I say this because it was a book that I did not consider a chore to get through. I will probably not read it a second time but I would recommend it to fans of the author.

This was my first Tess Gerritsen and one of my first forays into crime writing ? and wow, I was impressed! Gerritsen delivers a taut medical thriller that had me glued to the pages from the start. When the teenagers of the ironically-named lakeside town of Tranquility, Maine, are gripped by a wave of murderous violence, new town GP Claire is determined to find out what?s behind the almost superhuman levels of aggression in the seemingly possessed adolescents. Casting aside the arguments of the locals, who seem to be more intent on holding onto their town?s image as a haven for tourists than saving their children, Claire must do everything in her power to find a medical cause for the crazed killing and mindless fighting - particularly since her fourteen year-old son Noah is at risk too. Is it drugs? Some local pathogen? A chemical spillage of some kind? And could it be linked to the spate of similar violence that the town has been trying to forget for nearly fifty years? Whatever it is, the race is on to put a stop to it before it?s too late?I found the novel haunting, chilling and utterly compelling from start to finish. Every time I had to set it down to do something else, I found myself thinking about the terrible events that had happened so far, and trying to piece together all the clues to work out what was happening. It is a testament to the book?s strength that it pervaded every waking moment so thoroughly, and I found myself completely caught up in the excitement as the pages flew by, gasping with shock one moment and welling up with tears the next. At the same time, Gerritsen balances the horror of the town?s predicament with a dry humour, which was very refreshing and helped keep the story feeling grounded and human; it stopped it ? and the reader ? from getting too swept up in its own darkness. Highly recommended!