My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Yet again Mark Matthews has entertained me with a wildly wicked story. Milk-Blood is an Urban horror story (and horrifying it is) about drug addiction and life in the ghetto.
In Milk-Blood, the story opens up to the birth of Lilly, setting the stage for her horrible life. I love the fact that Matthews shows us Lilly’s birth and the circumstances surrounding it and the disappearance of her mother before continuing the story 10 years later.
Lilly lives on the one street that no one wants to go near. It is filled with homeless people, drug addicts and criminals. It is not safe. Lilly lives there with her dad and her grandma.
It is a brutal reality that is portrayed as Lilly speaks of hunger and her favorite time being the first of the month because that is when the food stamps come in. It is also sad to hear her speak on her father drinking and not taking care of her as he should. Lilly has a serious medical condition, to which she has to remember to take her pills and take care of herself. This is all unfortunate and very true for too many people in this world.
This level of realistic horror is what makes it such an engaging read. To see things through Lilly’s eyes and try to make sense of the cruel and desperate world to which she has to live. To feel her craving heroin and to understand that it is entirely possible for a 10 year old or younger to be addicted to these nasty drugs is depressing.
All of this was well designed and developed by Matthews. This reality, although disturbing, depressing, and horrifying, is what kept me reading. I had to know what was going to happen. The characters are interestingly crafted and there were some interesting twists that I did not see coming. Lilly’s character and her condition made her unique and all the more interesting.
The character of Jervis is so well done that I felt bad for the man in the beginning. But as the story develops and the twists are revealed…my mind changed.
It is a dark and twisted story on life in the ghetto and drug addiction. This book will take you down a wild roller-coaster of emotions and will leave you exhausted as you try to process and understand the horrors this book speaks of.
Purchase ‘Milk-Blood’ HERE!
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