10 stars - Nesbo never disappoints! Complex tapestry of receipt, lies, secrets, betrayals, infidelity, assault, and murder - woven through intense and broken characters in a small town looking to revive. Money is power, and information the currency. Not to be missed!

Wonderful book Joe husband is very detailed and detail oriented I was anxious to get to the end. Cover is mysterious and dark looking

Nesbo brings it again! Blood Ties is the tale of two brothers -Carl and Roy Opgard. Both are successful but that will rapidly come to an end with the construction of a new highway bypass. The brothers both have violent pasts and have no qualms with taking the matter into their own hands. Add in the town sheriff and suddenly there is an intense cat and mouse game made more intense by the idea of how much can each brother trust the other.

Perfect plot! All Nesbo fans will rejoice and hopefully sign up a new group of fans

#jonesbo #bloodties #knopfpantheonvintage

🌌✨ Okay, like, Blood Ties is a total vibe of family loyalty and dark secrets! ✨🌌 Set in this super cute but eerie Norwegian village called Os, it’s all about these brothers, Roy and Carl Opgard, who are, like, dealing with their seriously twisted past—think seven murders! 😱 Carl tells the story, so you really get to feel their complicated relationship and all the moral dilemmas, you know?

At first, it’s a bit slow, but OMG, the second half? It totally takes off! You get all the suspense and tension that Nesbø is famous for. The brotherly dynamics and their small-town life are, like, super vividly described, making the setting just as intriguing as the drama! 🌲💔

Even if you haven’t read The Kingdom, don’t worry; this one totally stands alone. Fans of Nesbø will dig the character depth, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of his Harry Hole series.

🌟🌟🌟🌟 I’m giving it four stars for this chilling tale of blood ties and moral complexity! Big thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion! 📚💖

The Opgard brothers are back in the tiny town of Os. Typical small town issues, one is the new highway coming or not coming. With Roy managing the gas station and amusement park and Carl with the fancy spa and hotel, the brothers have the town sewn up.

When it turns out the highway will not go through Os, the brothers feel the need to do something. And they have a good track record of doing stuff. No legal, mind you.

And then the Sheriff gets a new toy and is set to pull all of the old cars out of the ravine. Most put there by the brothers. This is a problem and the answer is shocking!

Always a pleasure!

NetGalley/ Thiomas and Mercer February 11,2025

Could not identify with the underlying moral leaning excuses for the violence.
Nesbo always does a fine job with characters and environment and this story was no different.
Brothers and quasi business partners, Roy and Carl have little moral fiber and while I appreciate the
role this plays in the story development of this particular tale, it was just not my thing.
Their shady dealings with present and past developers in their town have them on the
watch list of the town's equally unscrupulous sheriff
I could not feel any redeeming qualities in them, or, in fact, in almost any character.
I do so enjoy the Hole stories; simply could not embrace this offering.

Jo Nesbo creates an aura that’s incredibly dark, haunting, and impossible to turn away from. The scenery takes on a life of its own along with the flawed and incredibly life-like characters that keep you hooked in as the twists drive the narrative with precision in keeping you engaged completely.

I’ve been a Jo Nesbo fan for years. The Snowman may be one of my favorite books of all time. This book however, just wants for me. I think the overarching storyline was interesting. I think the characters were interesting. But the story just didn’t do it for me. Things didn’t mesh the way I wanted them to mesh and the conclusion wasn’t as satisfying as I would have liked it. I think it has the pieces, that puzzle is just not quite built.

Thanks to Jo Nesbo, Alfred A Knopf, and NetGalley for providing me an advanced reading copy.

The dark side of human nature and the complexities of familial bonds are explored in “Blood Ties” by Jo Nesbø.

   Blood Ties’ richly character-driven narratives about loyalty, ambition, and survival take us back to the Norwegian village of Os and the passive-aggressive siblings Roy and Carl Opgard (”The Kingdom”).

   The Opgard Brothers' dark secrets, personal ambitions, and professional rivalries were a malignancy that they chose to ignore—a festering gangrene. It was only a matter of time…

   Making matters worse, was the highway department bypassing Os for a more direct route to Oslo?

   And after a decade, would they be implicated in deaths previously ruled as accidents?

   JoyReaderGirl1 graciously thanks NetGalley, Author Jo Nesbø, and Publisher Random House UK for this advanced readers copy for review.

If you're a Harry Hole fan, as I am, this book might come as a bit of a shock. Don't get me wrong. It's a wonderful book, with engaging characters, an absorbing narrative, and some very fine writing, but I can't find in it the slightest sign of the noir world Harry Hole has always inhabited. This is an entirely different kind of world. There are plenty of nefarious doings afoot, of course, but the world in which they occur is vastly sunnier and more recognizable than Harry's.

Is it possible there are two Jo Nesbo's writing popular fiction these days, and this is the other one? If you told me that's true, I'd have no reason to disbelieve you.

I know I've read this before but it seems to be filled with more of what people need really to read. It's definitely not a noir read but it's filled with a lot of red herrings. You can never guess what will come from Roys mouth when it comes to all the killings. Then again his brother, Carl was a real manipulator both in how he loved and was loved in return, he always seem to think about himself. Always killing people who Roy liked and loved. It turned around with Natalie, and this is my excuse to turn you into the reading machine you are.

I was a bit hesitant to request this book. I loved Nesbo's early crime fiction, but as Harry Hole grew more popular the stories seemed to veer into American-style serial killer plots that I'm allergic to. But I do find his writing engaging and intelligent and decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. It's certainly not a serial killer thriller with excessive and grotesque gore (whew!) though there are quite a few bodies strewn about.

Two brothers in a small Norwegian town high in the mountains have a close but tense relationship. The younger one is ambitious and greedy and has been plans for the town where he plans to be the "king" through his business dealings. His older brother is content to own a garage but is used to rescuing his brother when he gets in trouble. They are bound by childhood trauma, and some of the favors the older brother has done involve murdering others, which threatens to come to light. Apparently all of this is set up in a previous book, The Kingdom, and while I was able to put all the pieces together without trouble, it might be advisable to start with that book.

The initial setup seemed slow to me - mostly involving a complex business deal and an effort to bribe engineers working on a highway bypass to give a report that the bypass that would leave the town isolated (and would hurt local businesses) didn't grab me immediately, but I became increasingly absorbed not just in the characters (the narrator is well drawn and complex) but in the setting. Nesbo does a great job of inhabiting this place and its history and culture. Some of his descriptions are vivid and quite lovely, and his depiction of the community seems sociologically on target and entertaining.

It did bother me a bit that, for the plot to work, the populace had to have an unusually high proportion of sex offenders and devious wheeler-dealers, a kind of rural noir that is a bit jarring in such a beautiful setting, though maybe it's not that different than the Ozarks.... in any case, that was a niggling reservation for me, though ultimately I think he pulled it off by delving so deeply into the main characters, the peripheral ones, and their relationships.

This is the continuation of the story of two brothers introduced in The Kingdom. Carl and Roy, bound by secrets, lies and murder still feel the family ties that have kept them enslaved for years. Roy is feeling the pressure of these nefarious acts he has accomplished and wondering where his life is headed. More a psychological story than a murder mystery I could feel the tension and sense something big was going to happen and I was not disappointed.

Highly recommend!