Title: Ghoster by Jason Arnopp
Publisher: Orbit
Date Published: 22nd October 2019
Genre: Thriller
Description:
Kate Collins has been ghosted.
She was supposed to be moving in with her new boyfriend Scott, but all she finds after relocating to Brighton is an empty flat. Scott has vanished. His possessions have all disappeared.
Except for his mobile phone.
Kate knows she shouldn’t hack into Scott’s phone. She shouldn’t look at his Tinder, his texts, his social media. But she can’t quite help herself.
That’s when the trouble starts. Strange, whispering phone calls from numbers she doesn’t recognise. Scratch marks on the door that she can’t explain.
And the growing feeling that she’s being watched . . .
Jason Arnopp – author of The Last Days of Jack Sparks, a Radio 2 Bookclub pick – returns with a razor-sharp thriller for a social-media obsessed world. Prepare to never look at your phone the same way again . . .
Review:
I want to thank Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers for inviting me on this blog tour and Orbit for providing me with a free copy of Ghoster in exchange for an honest review.
Kate Collins thinks she’s found her perfect man in Scott but a few days before she is supposed to move in with him, he ghosts her, leaving behind only his mobile phone.
She wants to find out what happened to him, so she hacks his phone. Her life starts to spiral of control, can she stop what’s happening before it’s too late?
Ghoster is one of those novels that you go in expecting one thing only for it to twist around and become something so unexpected and shocking that you find it hard to put down.
It starts out as a little domestic noir but the creepiness is really amped up as you go along, turning the book into more of a horror by the time you reach the end. As a lover of both horror and thrillers I really appreciated this.
I didn’t find Kate all that likeable, a little abrasive, a little obsessive but I think that works well in the story.
Truthfully, the first half of the novel is a little slow burn, it took me a little longer to get through it than usual but the second half had me racing along to find out what happened at the end.
Ghoster is a skillful mix of the supernatural and mystery that makes an intriguing and original thriller.
About The Author:
Jason Arnopp is the author of the new Orbit Books novel Ghoster, which Barnes &
Noble’s SFF blog has said, “just might qualify as the first true horror novel of the 21st Century.” The Three author Sarah Lotz calls it, “a fiendishly smart exploration of obsession and social media addiction”, while Cross Her Heat author Sarah Pinborough reckons it’s, “twisty, creepy and utterly absorbing.”
Arnopp’s previous novel was The Last Days Of Jack Sparks (2016), which has been described as “a magnificent millennial nightmare” (Alan Moore), “scarier than watching The Exorcist in an abandoned asylum” (Sarah Lotz) and “The Omen for the social media age” (Christopher Brookmyre). Director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon, The Da Vinci Code) optioned the film rights shortly after the book’s 2016 release.
Arnopp co-wrote the official behind-the-scenes book Inside Black Mirror with Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones.
Arnopp previously wrote and executive-produced the Lionsgate feature film Stormhouse and script-edited the Peter Mullan feature The Man Inside. He has also written for the worlds of Doctor Who (BBC), The Sarah Jane Adventures (BBC) and Friday The 13th (New Line Cinema).
In his past life as a rock journalist, he interviewed the likes of Bon Jovi, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne and Guns N’ Roses. He was once surrounded by angry guards holding semi-automatic weapons at The Vatican. His Slipknot biography, Slipknot: Inside The Sickness, Behind The Masks, was released in 2001 and is now available as a Kindle Edition. Arnopp has also written a guide to journalistic interviewing, entitled How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else, which is also out on Kindle.
Arnopp’s latest non-fiction book is From The Front Lines Of Rock. Available in the Kindle Store now, it gathers 30 of his favourite nterviews he wrote as a rock journalist, with the likes of Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Korn, Kiss, Faith No More, Garbage, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day.
When you sign up for Arnopp’s free newsletter at JasonArnopp.com, you can also download his short story American Hoarder for free. You might also want to check out his YouTube channel by searching for his name there. What a wonderful world.
On The Shelf Reviews 