I wanted to love this book so bad, but this thriller was not my cup of tea. It's a great story but the way it was presented to readers sometimes left me confused,

This book was a little hard to get into at first with the switching timelines and characters, but overall it was a very satisfying thriller.

Based on the synopsis, this book sounded like it was up my alley! I tend to gravitate towards books that are action-filled... this always leaves me wanting MORE! Unfortunately, I really struggled with this book and was unable to finish it 😔 I got 71 percent of the way through, so I feel like I gave it a fair shot!!

From the moment the reader starts this book, there’s talk of Zero Zone and how everyone’s lives were impacted by it. There were so many characters though, that I kept getting lost... I would often ask myself “wait, who is this again? How do they fit into this”. With the amount of characters, I felt like there were a lot of loose ends (I.e Jess and Alex and Alex’s wife... what happened to her?). Maybe things would have tied up in the end?

There was so much hype about the unfolding of the shooting at Zero Zone, but there was only one, short, not-so descriptive chapter that detailed what actually happened there. You would think that because the entirety of the book is premised on this ONE event, that a bit more attention would be given to this much-anticipated event (and I say “much-anticipated” because the event was detailed about 60 percent of the way through the book, which is another thing I did not really love).

I did experience a lot of formatting issues throughout the book. There were many random page breaks, as well as a new paragraph starting mid-sentence. For example:

"J
ess was a wonderful artist".

Though this book was not really for me, it may be for somebody else! Many people on Goodreads enjoyed this book! These are just my thoughts and opinions 😊

A literary thriller that starts with a near drowning and the multiple tragedies ensue over the course of the main character’s life. Loss, grief, and the power of art guide the actions of the characters. A unique and enjoyable read.

Thank you to Scott O’Connor and Counterpoint Press for the ARC.

Keeps the action pulsing with enough intrigue to make it hard to turn the virtual pages fast enough. Thoroughly fleshed-out characters you tend to either like or dislike with enthusiasm. A great bedtime read that'll keep you engaged till the very end. Highly recommended!

*This book was provided free of charge in exchange for my honest review. My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to participate in this program.*

Zero Zone by Scott O'Connor is set in 1970s Los Angeles, and follows the story of Jess, a artist who creates installations, rooms that visitors can enter. There was a death at one of her installations, a room in the desert along a hiking trail that cuts through an old atomic testing site. She's slowly easing back into art, with a new project, but her past needs to be addressed if she's to move on.

This was a fascinating book, full of the feel of the time and place, touching on identity, art, belonging and the appeal of annihilation. O'Connor moves the story back and forth through time in a way that enhances the story he's telling, as it moves from art galleries in Los Angeles to the dusty edges of Twentynine Palms to a smoky casino floor. I enjoyed the way O'Connor wrote his settings, integrated into the story he was telling and making the story richer with it, without bogging down in detail. I'm happy to have discovered this author and will certainly be hunting down his other books. I'd say more, but this is a book that deserves to be discovered without knowing much about it.

Zero Zone is all that I was expecting and more! I was a little bit suspicious of the 5.00 rating on Goodreads, but it does hold up! Zero Zone was an absolutely spectacular read that I finished in one sitting. It was absorbing and interesting, Zero Zone brings something new to the table.

I almost feel that I might be missing out, and I think I'll probably try to re-read this in print because there is so much to unpack. And I will also never feel the same amount of joy reading a paper copy than on a Kindle. But that might be just me!

Zero Zone's main conflict is around an art exhibit gone wrong, and which unintentionally inspired an aggressive cult. We see the before, during, and aftermath of the situation unfolding which I absolutely loved. It's nothing like I've ever read before and the originality of all the characters, settings, and plot points is an immediate plus.

Zero Zone will be released tomorrow, and I'm so happy I quickly found the chance to get to this before NetGalley archived it. It's a very worthy read with a plot and a literary writing style that will not disappoint.

This book intrigued me from the beginning. Told from different points of view and in different time frames, it focuses on an art installation in the desert and a cult that attaches itself to the installation.. Jess, the creator of the art installation goes through many emotional phases as she looks back on her childhood, reminisces about the installation and the furor that accompanied it, and deals with the people who are all wanting a piece of her. This book will appeal to anyone who is interested in art and the ramifications it can have on our lives.

This is a difficult book to quantify since there are so many overlapping themes that generate a flurry of impressions and emotions. It has therefore compelled me to add another category - Desert Noir. Like the books of James Anderson featuring truckdriver Ben Jones, the pull and mystique of the desert plays a major role here. But the substance is even more elusive in that here there is an art installation sitting on the site of an abandoned army base which once saw atomic bomb testing.

Set in the late 1970's and told from a number of POVs, the book weaves a spell that is hard to look away from. Jess Shepard has made a career out of producing installations reliant upon light and emotion, and into them she infuses her own deep rivers of guilt and grief. Each is unique, dependant upon the inner life of the viewer. At this, her most important piece, we encounter a quartet of damaged people each with their own demons and reasons for being at that spot. The events that ensue are both haunting and up for interpretation. As the narrative moves across a 3 year span, the lives come into richer focus, evidence of a writer at the top of his game.

Los Angeles, the late 1970s: Jess Shepard is an installation artist who creates environments that focus on light and space, often leading to intense sensory experiences for visitors to her work. A run of critically lauded projects peaks with Zero Zone, an installation at the former site of nuclear bomb testing in the New Mexico desert.

Zero Zone was amazing!
From the beginning.
To the the great plot.
To.the characters really pulling you in.
The writing was.fabulous!
And you can't best an ending like this one.

Thank You NetGalley Publisher and author for this great copy!

This is an intriguing and different kind of book and I quite enjoyed the journey it took me on. As a Californian who was here in the 70's, it also felt very nostalgic to me at times. The story, however, it quite unique - We have Jess, an "installation artist" who recovering after something has gone very wrong at her last project out in the desert - the "Zero Zone", and we will struggle along with her to learn just what happened there, and be introduced to a cast of characters who were involved in this experience. I do recommend this book and I thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for the early ARC.

I would have wanted to read this book even if it didn’t mention the world cult in the description. I absolutely loved O’Connor’s Perfect Universe, it was, in fact, perfect. And this book was just about on the same level of excellence. There’s just something about the way he writes, it’s absolutely luminous. The way the words come alive. In this case they do so to tell the story of grief and something like redemption or second chances. It’s a story of an artist, her creation and the way it affected some of those who experienced it. Set at the end of the 1970s when cults and cultlike mentalities thrived and flourished, which I suppose is the main relevance of the era to the story. Jess, the artist, creates large building size installation works. Zero Zone is one of them, set in the middle of the desert trail near an old military area. It was meant to represent Jess’ grief over the death of her lover, but of course once art is out there it’s up for personal interpretations. But this seems to be the case of grief attracting grief and the building proves magnetic for four profoundly disturbed individuals and the situation subsequently turns into a violent standoff. So as you see, not a cult story per se. One of the four, Tanner, is by all means a cult leader in the making, but the potential is never properly realized, so he’s more of a charismatically eloquent outsider with a death wish and (later) a devoted friend/personal muscle. Then there’s a 16 year old girl so depressed and uncomfortable in her skin that she desperately tries to disappear and, when starvation alone doesn’t do the trick, looks for alternative means. Thwarted, she lashes out, attacking Jess, but eventually it is Jess becomes her rescuer. There are other characters, the sad and lonely waitress who ends up helping the girl, Jess’ brother…Since this is very much a character driven work, their dynamics are very important, crucial, in fact. The overall effect is mosaic, all these incomplete loners, outsiders, misfits trying to…ascend, I suppose, get to a higher plane since this one became so unbearable, and it all comes together and shines as story, however sad, it is somehow (magically) never depressing. There is no outright evil here, everyone’s journey has been shaped by those around them, all roads lead them to Zero Zone. It all boils down to making that final choice, once the destination is reached. For that…you have to read the book. It’s not just character driven, it is very much plot driven also, marketed as literary thriller, so there you go. For me, though, it was less of a thriller and more of a drama, first rate drama, elevated ever so much by absolutely spectacular writing. This is literature at its finest. Less subjective than art. Especially the sort of art in this book. Made me contemplate artist’s moral responsibility for the work they produce. But then again, the nature of madness isn’t strictly location bound and quantifiable or knowable that way. Some might look at a building in the middle of the desert as a novelty, some as art, some as a place of self obliteration…find out what Zero Zone might be for you. Zero Zone, the book, is a thing of beauty. Loved it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

A noir thriller an art installation a cult.A novel that drew me in from the beginning ,beautifully written a story that flows creative unique highly recommend,#netgalley#counterpointpress.

An extraordinary book touching on several themes: how art is inspired, experienced and interpreted, responsibility and guilt, healing spiritual and emotional wounds. I wish that I could experience some of the installations described for myself!