Holy moly this was a slow book! Especially the beginning. I almost gave up early on! It made me wonder if I was even reading a thriller - where was the suspense or any element of mystery? Even when the story "built up" the suspense and thrill fell really short.

Speaking of falling short, that ending! It was so abrupt and just ended out of nowhere. I was left feeling confused and dissatisfied.

I also did not care for the characters. I found them annoying and could care less what happened to them. .

Thanks The Book Guild | Book Guild Publishing and NetGalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

I recommend this book largely for its curiosity value. It's a novel which refuses to be put in a genre pigeonhole.
Lee Coates launches into his debut with several stream of consciousness passages which give little indication of where the plot is likely to go. It's an innovative approach.
The horror when it comes is totally unexpected and brutally graphic and perhaps more so as it appears at this stage to have no human or supernatural intervention.
Suddenly relationships are thrown into turmoil: father and son, girlfriend and boyfriend; and the complexities of the plot are established.
I loved the total ambiguity of the ending and fates left hanging in the balance.

Life turns on a dime and this book takes that idea and runs with it. Just one look turns Jim’s life upside down. I really liked the concept and through the author did a good job of developing Jim and his relationships in such a way that I felt very invested in him and what happened. Some lovely use of language here, too, which was nice.

Slow start, nothing particularly interesting happens until chapter 6 and that seems fairly minor. End of chapter 7 has a hint of of a question but not quite any sort of mystery yet. What seems to be the main mystery starts in chapter 11. While I understand the author wanting to give us insight and background of the main character but after all that I did not find him at all interesting or endearing. I did not understand most of the jokes and despite having a fairly good vocabulary there was a lot of words I had not heard of before, to the point of feeling a bit high and mighty. The twist was bizarre and confusing. All the eyeball stuff was just nauseating. The end was sudden and felt cut off. I actually kept swiping for a minute thinking there was another page and a glitch must be happening in my app but when I backed out it told me it was 100% done. Left me confounded and unsatisfied. Even if it is a glitch I do not care enough about the story to go looking for the ending.

Jim doesn't have a clue who he is, not until he proposes to his girlfriend does the truth about his origin begin to surface.

The dreams he has coupled with terrible vents that begins to happen leave him really confused.
Good plot, good characters, especially the man Jim grew to call his Dad (but was he?).

You'll be desperate to know the truth about Jim... only be ready to go through some elaborate descriptions and digressions in between...

Something a bit different here.
An enjoyable read by a new author.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy.
A worthy four star read.