It may be hurtling towards Christmas and my bookshelf is overflowing with cinnamon infused stories but today’s review is on the dark side. Several friends’ whose opinions I trust rave about Will Carver novels so I was excited to be invited to the tour for his new release, Suicide Thursday and share my unbiased opinion.
Book Review: Suicide Thursday by Will Carver
Title: Suicide Thursday
Author: Will Carver
Publisher: Orenda books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: 24th November 2022
Blurb
If words could kill…
Eli Hagin can’t finish anything. He hates his job, but can’t seem to quit. He doesn’t want to be with his girlfriend, but doesn’t know how end things with her, either. Eli wants to write a novel, but he’s never taken a story beyond the first chapter. Eli also has trouble separating reality from fiction. When his best friend kills himself, Eli is motivated, for the first time in his life, to finally end something himself, just as Mike did…
Except sessions with his therapist suggest that Eli’s most recent ‘first chapters’ are not as fictitious as he had intended … and a series of text messages that Mike received before his death point to something much, much darker…
My Thoughts
Being new to Will Carver’s novels I wasn’t sure what to expect but I do know I wasn’t expecting such a dark, unnerving and thought provoking read that made me chuckle one minute with the cynical humorous observations and cringe in horror the next. It may not have been a fast paced thriller but I was hooked. Seen through the eyes of the main players, Eli, Jackie and Mike, it effortlessly hopped back and forth in time to reveal the truth behind Mike’s suicide.
All characters were flawed but Eli was horrid. Usually arrogant, entitled and shallow protagonists put me off a book making them destined to the ‘did not finish’ pile, but despite feeling sullied by witnessing his cold disregard to others I was compelled to know more. The unreliability in his narration added to the mystery of Mike’s suicide as did the sinister messages sent to Mike prior to his death. I had to admire Eli for his entrepreneurism of selling his first chapters for others to use and understood his difficulties putting words down to fulfil his author goal but as a person he’d be one to avoid. As a fictional protagonist, he lodged in my imagination making it impossible to put the book down.
Would I recommend?
Oh yes, Suicide Thursday is a sinister, unique and unforgettable novel trudging through the taboo subject of suicide and wider accountability as well as a study of the monotony of life and the decisions made. Cleverly written, I felt guilty for enjoying Eli’s dark take on life but it left me with a book hangover and the need to read Will Carver’s back catalogue.
Author Biography
Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series that includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press. Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award 2020 and Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by three standalone literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous (both optioned for TV) and The Daves Next Door. He lives in Reading with his family.
Thank you Random Thing Tours and Orenda books for inviting me to this tour and providing an advanced copy for me to review and give my honest and unbiased opinion.
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Kate Kenzie Writes 