Release Date: Expected 10th November 2022
Publisher: Orenda Books
"Pain tourists - people who revel in the misery of others."
James has lived multiple lives - there's the one before his parents cold-blooded execution during a home invasion when he was just a child, the one before everything went wrong, and then the one he lived during the nine-year coma he fell into after being shot that fateful night. And now, the latest life he gets to live after he manages to finally wake up.
Rebecca is driving herself into madness trying to catch Copy Joe - a prolific murderer who takes sick pleasure in mimicking the most horrific killers like the Christchurch Carver when she is tasked with taking up the cold case of James and the night he was shot. The very same case her colleague Theo Tate couldn't solve almost a decade ago and she isn't sure if she can either.
But as James starts to recover and open up to his Doctor about the mysterious life he led in his coma, everyone realises he knows things he shouldn't. And he might just have the key to not only solve his own mystery, but catching the monsters everybody has been chasing for years.
"In movies, monsters are always zombie, or vampires, or some weird kind of mutant, but in this moment his eleven year old brain tells him he's been wrong all this time. What he's looking at now are monsters. Real monsters."
If you're not familiar with the literary legend that is Paul Cleave, strap yourself in for a hell of a ride. This wordsmith has the almost supernatural ability to take even the most mundane of settings and turn it into something twisted and terrifying, of taking some the nightmare fuel from our favourite horrors, like coma's and killers and dream lives, and breathing new lives into them with his own horrifying twist.
We start off on the most terrible night of our characters lives - the day James' parents were killed and life as he knows it ends. We meet his sister Hazel, Tate and his team desperately searching for clues, neighbours terrified they could be next. Each person is written in such a painstakingly familiar way it feels as though we know them. And as we approach the moment James finally wakes up, we get to see how their lives have changed in the last decade, as well as the mysterious figures who have lurking in the shadows waiting with us to see what happens.
Each character was perfectly crafted to be the right amount of endearing and suspicious. All of them could make a perfect hero or a perfect villain if you wanted them to, and you can't trust anything you hear.
Despite moving between times and even realities, this story kept such a perpetual flow that never breaks. Each little strand of this story never wavers, never gets lost in the bigger picture but slowly weaves together into something dark and totally magnificent. And this just leaves us free to get lost in the masterful setting - exquisitely tense and with a suffocating aura of dread. Even the moments where nothing particularly happens was charged with electricity and anticipation. It felt like the story was ending, like I'd solved everything several times over, only for the illusion to be shattered all over again.
This story taps firmly into the strange and unsettling parts of the human psyche - including the phenomenon of the Pain Tourist. Of course, if you opened this review, you must find the concept of criminal minds and murder somewhat intriguing - but what about those who take it further? The ones who visit murder sites and marry death row convicts? How much further, dear reader, would you have to go until you take it too far?
A compulsive, compelling read that will remind you that humans are the most terrifying monsters out there.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours and Karen at Orenda Books for inviting me to take part in this tour. I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review,.
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