Blood Sugar

By: Daniel Kraus

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne

From the dark imagination of New York Times bestselling novelist Daniel Kraus - co-author with Guillermo del Toro of THE SHAPE OF WATER (which as a film won the Academy Award for Best Picture) - comes a Halloween crime story that's like nothing you've ever heard before.

WHEN TRICK OR TREAT

BECOMES LIFE OR DEATH

At the end of Yellow Street, in a ruined junkyard of a house, an angry outcast hatches a scheme to take revenge for all the wrongs he has suffered. With the help of three alienated neighborhood kids, he plans to hide razor blades, poison, drugs, and broken glass in Halloween candy and use the deadly treats to maim or kill dozens of innocent children. But as the clock ticks closer to sundown, will one of his helpers - an innocent himself, in his own streetwise way - carry out or defeat the plan?

Told principally from the child's point of view, in a voice as startling and unforgettable as A Clockwork Orange, Kraus' novel is at once frightening and emotional, thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. It'll make you rethink your concepts of family and loyalty and justice - and will leave you anxiously double-checking the wrappers on your Halloween candy for the rest of your days.

An incredible piece.

As always, Kraus wows with his dedication to conveying some of the most profound truths in fiction. The hope that we can change, that we can move beyond the wrongs done to us, that we can chase away the demons of our past, if only for a Halloween night.

Wow...

My feelings about this book are complicated. It is beautifully written, and a beautifully told the story, and I did expect something dark but not in this way. I’m not sure if I should recommend this book to everyone I know or warn people away from it.

Disturbing yet hilarious

Daniel Kraus was in his top form with Blood Sugar. He has this way of making even the most broken characters relatable. I love how he intertwines stories and characters from other works. It’s like hearing chapters from one all-encompassing tale. Bringing back Kirby Heyborne for the audio brings it all together.

Unexpected point of view

I was not expecting for this one to run away with me the way it did. Mostly told in the voice of a young person who has developed his own non-profane vocabulary, the first few chapters were an exercise in patience.
But once I get a hang of Jody's point of view Daniel Kraus weaves a very suspenseful tale about kids growing up on the edge of society. With way more pathos than one might give a "pulp" crime story on first blush, Blood Sugar was a dark and unnerving journey to the literal wrong side of the tracks.

DNF, Surprised Anyone Did

A pretentious mess of unnecessary obfuscation, gratuitous grotesqueness, and tedious tropes. It is unnecessarily cruel and stupidly violent. If that's your cup of tea...