Wild Isle Review:

WARNING! INEVITABLE SPOILERS BELOW!

Bleed More, is what I’d describe as a blend of urban myth-inspired fantasy, supernatural mystery, and magical realism. We follow our protagonist, Josephine Bourgeois, a skater-girl “Baltimoron” who gets wrapped up in a strange murder mystery when she receives an odd call for a pick-up job for the auto-body shop for which she works. Turns out the car she’s towing belong to her childhood friend, Wayland—though he’s no where in sight, and that inside the trunk is a mysteriously disfigured corpse whose discover sparks Joey’s personal investigation.

It’s a fast paced mystery with a lot of sardonic humor thanks to our first person narrator. Joey hardly lets a moment pass without poking fun at authority or making light of every dismal and dreadful discovery throughout the course of the book. This is one one Bleed More’s strengths as well as its weakness.

We’ll start with the positive. I can say honestly that, from cover to cover, I was never bored. Not once. In large part that is thanks to Josephine’s character. She’s very witty, and hers is a perspective that never lingers too long on what would otherwise be slower storytelling elements (such as setting or background exposition). Furthermore, because of her own character history (laden with tragedy and abuse), when those slower moments do occasionally appear, they are weighty with emotion and personal stakes for Joey.

However, though never bored, I did roll my eyes on a number of occasions. Unfortunately, Joey’s character doesn’t translate well into emotionally-serious exposition or narration requiring formal or high diction. Perhaps this would not bother most readers and is an author’s curse (I find writer’s tastes to be starkly different than those of readers generally), but because Joey almost never took herself or her situations seriously, I found any tension caused by danger or emotional strain to fall flat. I never believed Joey was ever in real danger from exposure to violence (*spoiler* even when she was literally being strangled to death). Likewise, because her attitude toward her own emotional suffering was lax and immature, I did have a shred of sympathy. These scene left me with the impression of an petulant child more than anything (though like I mentioned, that might be for reasons other than the writing itself—take what I say with a mountain of salt).

I mentioned diction, though really this applies to stylistic elements generally. This is another simultaneous strength and weakness of Bleed More. The author is clearly capable of weaving together whole paragraphs of dark, beautiful, haunting set pieces. She does so on many occasions and with such affect that the mundane spookiness of Leakin Park stands out much more in my mind than even the supernatural elements. But remember what I said about our protagonist and narrator? These haunting scene descriptions clash noticeably with much of Joey’s narrative exposition and almost all of her dialogue.

But perhaps this all fits together. Earlier, I said that this story shifts in genre, and I meant it. While the first two-thirds to three-quarters feel very much like a supernatural mystery drama or thriller, as the mini-mysteries piled up are solved, the story-telling becomes much more reminiscent of an urban fantasy novel (especially that last chapter and it’s conclusion / set up for the next installment—but I won’t spoil that here). The author handles the transition well, so whether this is good or bad or neutral is really up to the reader.

Overall, I had fun and look forward to more of Kirkpatrick’s work. If what you’ve read sounds interesting, you can pick up Bleed More on Amazon via a link in the image above (as well as her other works). So what are you waiting for? Follow the link and eat some poor hapless Baltimoron sap’s heart out.