On Amazon UK
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How I discovered this book: Twitter
In a Nutshell: Long novelette/short novella, dark psychological fiction/horror: mind control.
This is a clever, short book about a boy called Zachary who is placed in an institute at a very early age, where he has contact with no humans apart from his carers for some years. He is found 'parents' at around the age of 5, and from then on every aspect of his life is monitored and controlled by a shadow organisation. His family, friends, the ups and mostly downs throughout his life—none of it happens by accident. His formative years are damaging enough, but as the tragedies and losses pile up, he becomes increasingly paranoid and sociopathic.
The story is very well written, and a real page turner; I couldn't work out why any of it was happening or what the outcome was going to be. In the last third of the book there is a massive twist, completely unexpected—and the purpose of the whole 'experiment' is revealed at last. I'm usually pretty good at predicting stuff like this, but I didn't guess it.
It's a dark and distressing story, not for the faint of heart, but for anyone who likes low-key, psychological horror, and has an interest in behind the scenes mind control (that's me with both hands up), I'd most certainly recommend it.
That's a new one, Terry - finding a book on Twitter and a decent one to boot!
ReplyDeleteI find quite a few books that I review via Twitter, Noelle - the way I look at it is that if we expect others to take notice of our book tweets, then we should be open to them as well!! Half the 'via Twitter' ones I find are because I've got talking to the writer, but there are some that I just downloaded because I thought it looked good. Once, I even found a writer who became one of my favourite authors, via a tweet. So that gave me a more positive outlook on it, I suppose!!
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