The first chapter described something very reminiscent of trigeminal neuralgia — twitching of the face — which is a condition I’ve had for 15 years now. The character with the twitching ends up committing suicide... TN is called “the suicide disease.”

This struck home a little too much for me. I had to put the book down and step away. And decide if I was going to finish.

I decided to continue reading on... then there was more suicide and that was the last straw, I DNF at 20%.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series and was really excited about this one. However, I read to escape and reading multiple suicides — I skimmed to see what else would come up in the rest of the book — isn’t really what I want to escape to.

It’s a shame, because I could feel this book had potential.

Not reading the first book will be a problem for readers. The other problem is the pacing and some of the big action scenes - many were too fast to figure out what exactly was happening, while others seemed poorly plotted.

I received an ARC copy from netgalley for my honest review, so thank you netgalley and publishers for offering me this book! ♡
The cover and title is what originally drew me to this book.
This is the second book in a series
New Earth, 2296. Two years after the destruction of a universal surveillance system called the Intercept, New Earth struggles to keep crime under control. The citizens are free, but not protected.
Violet Crowley, the eighteen-year-old daughter of New Earth's founder, has opened Crowley & Associates, a private detective agency, to handle the overflow from the overburdened police force.
Violet's first case—a death written off as a suicide—becomes an obsession. Soon a series of similar deaths leads Violet to believe the Intercept is not only still running—it's in the hands of a killer.
This was my first book by this author. It was alltogether an easy read. ♡ I give this book a
3.5 star rating!

This wasn't a great fit for me as a reader. There's not a lot of world building in this book to build on the first in the series - I had been hoping for more development in that area after finishing book one. I still didn't have any main characters I really liked. There's not enough engaging character development for me. Most of the off-plot musings - things that might be character development - were parts I skipped over to get back to the main mystery. They just didn't grab my attention. I'm still trying to determine if the author has a "message" with these books about emotional freedom or emotional self-regulation. The title for book 3 grabs my attention after an event in this book, but I'm not certain I will stick with the series after this one.

Severe trigger warning (TW) for suicide. This is a dark story due to the rash of suicides that take place. They are an integral part of the story but the scenes could be triggering.

I requested Dark Mind Rising with a bit of hesitation. I'd read and review The Dark Intercept some time ago, without finding the book beautiful. It didn't work and there were some issue that at first I didn't pick up at all. But then, when I read the blurb of the second book, I decided to give the series a second chance.

The concept was interesting and the Intercept, a machine able to send imagines and memories to people's mind, stopping them from committing a crime, could raise many interesting issue to discuss about justice. The first book wasn't able to do so, and I hoped that the second could have done a better job.

It didn't. At all. Since the blurb heavily relied on the topic of suicide, and so the whole story should had too, I was hoping to find some interesting and appropriate writing of such delicate topic. Again, it was a no.

Just like the first book, the second novel left with little. We have Violet, whom is trying to figure out her life and a bunch of secondary characters that could be replaced by anyone else. There would have been no difference.

I will start a little with what didn't worked in the book on plot and characters levels. First point is: everything. from pacing to romance.

The book, despite this entering the morbid and maybe tasteless premise, suggest that there will be some thrilling hunt for the killer. But... nope. The whole book dragged on and on for so long, to the point that around the 85%, there was no trace and no actual research of who was the killer. Nothing. And people kept dying.

As I already said, characters where irrelevant and despite I appreciated a bit the portrait of Violet, which is young, does some not bright things, but is trying to live on her own. I still cannot accept that fact that she could have prevented so many things to happen if she had spoken with people. Literally. The only people who can help her... she doesn't talk to them until it's too late. And we're atalking about an investigation in which  

The romance too. It was moved around, talked around, but was really random and made little sense. So does the end and the discovery of the killer. Everything was really anticlimactic and almost random.

My major issue with this novel is the topic of suicide. It was badly treated. Really bad. First of all it contains really graphic scenes of suicide, including what can be basically described as child suicide. The thing was so bad that I really bothered no one cared about putting a little warning. If there was, I didn't catch it, so in case that's my bad. But still...

Point is that suicide has no relevance in the book, despite being the whole plot base of it. People are induced to kill themselves, scene are freely graphic and sometimes even bloody, little exploration of the grief, mental illness and everything that could be related to suicide.

Three things really indisposed me. First of all the author dedicated entire chapters to the whole suicides scenes. I could have not well tolerated one. To a maximum extend of my flexibility, I could have understood the presence of one to let the reader know how  the killer operate, but was it necessary for every death? No, it wasn't. At all.

Usually I'm not exactly that one that jumps up and be like "we must protect the teens" in its extreme mode. I know teens face big issue, sometimes as much as adults, so it's good to find book with dark topics where they can learn, confront, find solace and such. But in this case, the book is targeted as young adult. Graphic scenes can be okay, but not in such ways, especially not when the people who dies are teens too, or are slightly more grown up. What kind of confrontation may teens find from this novel? None.

The topic is also close to me and trust me that I would have not find anything useful in this book. Just because it's a sci-fi thriller, it doesn't mean that other topics should be discharged because of focusing on the thrilling aspects (that in the book was missed anyway).

Another final thing is that people all around the book supported the harmful concept that people with what can be defined a happy life, objectives, goals, loving family, cannot suicide. I hope I don't have to explain that not how any condition that can lead to suicide, still progress and work whatever people have or not what society define as fulfilled life.

HUGE content warning for suicide. HUGE. Don’t read this book if you aren’t comfortable reading fairly graphic descriptions of said act. I’m usually a fairly robust reader and this made me super uncomfortable. I appreciate this is the point, it’s supposed to be unsettling, but reader discretion is advised.

This is possibly just me, but I personally feel that the alcoholic (or heavy drinking), lonely, damaged PI character is a little bit overdone? Obviously, the classic example of this kind of character is usually male, so there is some differentiation there, and I do think it is important to address the trauma that a character went through in the first book and the lasting effects of that trauma. Just because you saved the world doesn’t magically make you happy. All the same, I felt like this idea didn’t quite work? I think I wasn’t quite clear on why she became a PI when it so obviously wasn’t really working out for her. Perhaps that is me misremembering or forgetting something key from the first book (entirely plausible) but I wasn’t totally clear on Violet’s motivations.

I thought that the way the book built up the threat levels was very well done. What starts as a series of, albeit horrifying, situations builds to the potential to be truly devastating, whether that happens or not you’ll have to find out by reading it. It’s like the horror movie problem, if you can’t see the monster if you don’t fully understand it, then it’s so much more terrifying. By making part of the mystery finding out why these bad things are happening and what the person behind them wants, the threat level is raised to a much higher level. I’m probably overanalysing it, but it works.

One thing I did enjoy was, once again, the separation between new and old earth. This isn’t as important in this book as it is in the first one, but there are some interesting ideas in there about preservation and permanence which I think were good ideas to bring up, especially in a time where everything feels very disposable.

This is a difficult read in quite a few moments, as I say reader discretion is advised, but it is a good way of building on some of the ideas of the first book. I would say that you probably need to have read The Dark Intercept to get the full force of this book as it feels very much like a sequel.

My rating: 3/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.