![]() In this, Blue’s seventh outing, it’s not just the sturdy protagonist that seems to be wilting. Blue is therefore surprised (but readers may not be) when he pulls into his garage to be greeted by all his friends with a shiny blue valentine just for him. But as Blue heads home, his deliveries complete, his headlight eyes are sad and his front bumper droops ever so slightly. With each delivery there is an exchange of Beeps from Blue and the appropriate animal sounds from his friends, Blue’s Beeps always set in blue and the animal’s vocalization in a color that matches the card it receives. ![]() His bed overflowing with cards, Blue sets out to deliver a yellow card with purple polka dots and a shiny purple heart to Hen, one with a shiny fuchsia heart to Pig, a big, shiny, red heart-shaped card to Horse, and so on. Little Blue Truck feels, well, blue when he delivers valentine after valentine but receives nary a one. Thoughtful, well-crafted, and sure to be popular. Beginning with its engaging title and jacket, this has a lot going for it: an unusually perceptive portrayal of kids on the brink of teen-age concerns, including Vicki's tentative brushes with the new "hunk" next door and a long-time antagonist at school narrator Vicki, who understands herself pretty well even amid unexpected complications the charming logic of the sugar-baby project, a nifty exercise in responsibility and Mom's generous, creative solution to Vicki's understandable wish to spend time with Dad's new daughter. Ambrose's distress fortunately, her true conscientious nature reasserts itself. Stricken by guilt, Vicki is tempted to conceal Babe's loss, as well as her part in Mr. ![]() Ambrose-who is so upset by Vicki's subsequent scolding that he too disappears. Babe vanishes from the care of Vicki's hastily appointed babysister-nice but senile Mr. However, the pressures of being a normal 11-year-old inevitably create conflicts with her good intentions. bag of sugar, "Babe," as if it were a real baby. Thank you to Putnam Books and Net Galley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.Hoping to prove that she is responsible enough to be left in charge of her four-year-old half-sister, Vicki takes on the new class project with high expectations: she will care for her 5-lb. It’s very much worth letting the story unfold with every unexpected twist and turn. I don’t want to say too much else because jumping in as blind as possible s the way to go here (as I did, before finishing the book in one sitting). Ruby is deliciously flawed, with a thought process that *almost* makes you understand her occasionally deranged behavior (emphasis on “almost”). But once I got into it for real, I found that Rothchild’s bare-bones writing approach actually works to the story’s advantage. Dialogue is sparse and I kept having to tamp down the nagging urge to want more from each chapter - be it deeper scene descriptions, fleshed-out characters, a better analysis of motivations, etc. That being said, it did take me a few chapters to fully mesh with the rhythms of the story and style of writing. The first chapter is short and shocking, and reeled me in immediately. And *why* is she speaking with a detective, you might be wondering? Well, adult Ruby - now a successful psychologist - is suspected of killing her husband, as well as three other people. The novel then continues along with her over the course of a few very important stages in her life, much of which which she recounts internally during an interrogation with a detective. The woman in question is Miami native Ruby, gifted and intelligent, who we first meet at five years old during an ill-fated beach excursion that results in the death of a classmate. Not all the time, to be fair! But definitely enough to be a bit of a problem. It’s an acerbic, deeply twisted, darkly funny novel about a woman whose answer to life’s biggest problems is…murder. Ripley with Dexter and you’ll get something close to Blood Sugar, Sascha Rothchild’s debut psychological thriller.
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