Both are dealing with their own problems: Strike over his aunt's illness, suicide threats from his ex-fiancée Charlotte (now a married mother of two), and the attempts of his half-siblings to get him to attend a party honouring his rock star biological father Jonny Rokeby; Robin over Matthew's intransigence in their divorce, her continuing PTSD, and her unsettled personal life, brought into clearer focus by her brother and his wife having their first child.

[9] In The Daily Telegraph, the reviewer Jake Kerridge complimented the novel's character development and pleasant reading, while finding it unnecessarily long and less exciting than previous books of the series.

[2] Clare Clark, writing for The Guardian, gave the novel a positive review, pointing out its plot full of "simmering emotional tension" and "terrific fun", while acknowledging that it was excessively long and "hardly a hair-raising ride".

[10] Writing for The Washington Post, Bill Sheehan praised the development of the series central characters alongside the novel's narrative and called Rowling "a natural, supremely confident storyteller".

[12] Kelly Lawler, reviewing for USA Today, called the novel a "laborious read" and "simply not good", paling in comparison to previous books in the series.

[14] Some media outlets regarded the male villain who dresses as a woman in order to kill women as transphobic, given the author's past comments on transgender people.

[20] Laura Bradley, reviewing in The Daily Beast, wrote that there were "pernicious anti-trans tropes"[21] in the novel, while Jake Kerridge observed that the book's "moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress".

[22] Alison Flood, writing for The Guardian, expressed similar views, arguing that people who have not read the book were making wrong assumptions based on a single review.

[12] Troubled Blood was adapted as part of the television series starring Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike and Holliday Grainger as Robin Ellacott.