Blood Wounds

Blood Wounds, in my opinion, is the best thing Susan Beth Pfeffer's written so far.
     Willa is part of a mixed family.  She knows that she's lucky to have Jack, her step-father.  She knows that she's lucky to have her two step-sisters, even though they've been spoiled silly by their mother.  She knows she's lucky that she's out of her biological father's house, where things were bad for her mother.  She becomes even more aware of this fact when it is becomes clear that her father has gone on a killing spree, killing his new wife and their three daughters.  The danger rises as her father comes into her town, possibly looking for her and her mother.
      The danger does pass, but the aftermath is almost worse.  Caught between her 'real' family and her blood family, Willa wants to make peace with the half-sisters she never met, the half-brother she could never forget, and the town that is out for her family's blood.  Even if it tears her 'real' family apart. 

I usually find realistic fiction boring, but this one was good.  I couldn't put it down, actually.  I think I annoyed some librarians:  I sat in the library and read it for an hour solid while they kept turning up the air conditioner, trying to get me out (  ;).
     Willa is the most heart-warming character I've come across in a while.  She is brave to face the people that hate her, and I can only hope to emulate that.  I could also never imagine being in the situation she is in with her step-sisters.  They are real brats, even if they don't seem it at first glance, and I don't think I could continue being nice to them after all I saw them get.  Does that make any sense?  Okay, so, what I'm trying to say is that Willa must be a lovely person to remain happy and untainted even while Brooke and Alyssa get everything they want. 
     This book has a lot of similarities to Wild Things, in my mind, if only because there is an unknown half-brother and both team up and deal with some aspect of death.  I like Trace more than I like Wil, though, in some aspects.  Trace is more of a real-world guy, and I can picture him giving Willa advice about the world later in life.  World-hardened and street-toughened, he's the older brother that I wish I had.  (Well, I wish I had any older brother, really, but if I could have my pick of them, I'd choose Trace.) 
       No matter how many similarities you'll find between this books and others, there is one thing that I've never found in any other book:  The plot line.  It is a very sick, twisted plot line.  It's something that you would never see coming.  If you think about it too much, your stomach turns.  But it's new.  Please name a book in which there is something equally disturbing. (Maybe I should give this book to my dad for Father's Day . . . That would be cruel.)
      I cried several times while reading this.  I would've laughed out loud too, but there were really no funny parts.  I've been reading books that I haven't been posting on, and I haven't been posting on them because I don't like them.  The characters were paper dolls, the plots, meaningless.  But here, I felt like there was something at stake, so my emotions ran rampant with it.  I probably made myself look life a fool while sitting in the Young Adult section, but so be it.  It was well worth it.
    If every realistic fiction book were like this, you wouldn't be able to pull me away from them.  As it is, I am feeling deprived.  Blood Wounds doesn't just get under your skin:  It cuts you all the way to your heart.