My Goodreads and Amazon review of Blood Up North by Fredrick Soukup (Rating 5) – Hope Among the Hapless. Some people are bad; others are stupid. Some folks try to be good or smart but keep messing up. That sums up the hapless characters in Fredrick Soukup’s gritty, lowdown, yet often hilariously over-the-top novel Blood Up North, whose body count threatens to rival Hamlet. Don’t trust anything anyone says because they’ll change their story by the next page, if not the next paragraph. Cassie, the plucky protagonist, seems to have learned this, but out of her inherent kindness and/or search for love, she occasionally appears gullible. Whether she actually is, or merely joins every other character in taking the rest for a ride, readers will have fun following the plot’s convoluted twists and turns, even if, like me, you lose track of where they’ve been or might be going. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Soukup’s ingenuity and ability to sustain the story’s momentum. What ultimately steers this book and makes readers care about the outcome is Cassie. She’s tough yet surprisingly vulnerable, competent with lapses of helplessness, a veritable venison stew of unresolvable parts. The girl has been dealt a lousy hand and deserves to outwit her tormentors, who are motivated by greed, revenge, and male ego. Root for her. You’ll be rewarded in the end.
