Title: Deity by Matt Wesolowski
Publisher: Orenda Books
Date Published: 18th February 2021
Genre: Thriller
Description:
When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator, who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls.
Online journalist, Scott King, whose ‘Six Stories’ podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rakes over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge. Was the fire at Crystal’s remote home really an accident? Why was he never officially charged? Are reports of a haunting really true?
Dark, chillingly topical and deeply thought-provoking, Deity is both an explosive, spine-chilling thriller and a startling look at how heroes can fall from grace and why we are willing to turn a blind eye to even the most heinous of crimes…
Review:
I want to thank Anne Cater for inviting me on this tour and Orenda Books for providing me a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
So this is my second outing into the world of podcaster Scott King even though this is the fifth book in the series, (The previous novel I read was the first Six Stories which I read last year and loved.), but I thought, it’s lockdown, I’m living on the edge so I’ll just jump into Deity. For me it did work well as a standalone, even though it had a character from one of the previous books in it.
I have such a book hangover and it’s all Matt Wesolowski’s fault! I genuinely have not stopped thinking about Deity for days and how I am going to do justice in my review!
If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s told through six podcast interviews, this time it’s interspersed with the last interview that Zach Crystal ever did. We’re taken through Zach Crystal’s rise to fame, then infamy and hear from detractors and obsessed superfans trying to actually find out who the real Zach Crystal was and what really happened to him.
I absolutely love the sort of supernatural aspect that is brought into the story, to run alongside the mystery that adds that extra layer of intrigue and creepiness. The paranormal element in this book took the form of a creature that legend says roams the woods around Zach Crystal’s property and is supposedly a portent of disaster.
Deity really kept me guessing until the end. There were a few subtle clues along the way but it was so cleverly written that I completely missed them.
A little warning, this story deals with themes of abuse and violence which some people may find a little upsetting.
Deity is a dark and devastating yet utterly addictive and I cannot recommend highly enough!
About The Author:
Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-based anthologies, such as Midnight Movie Creature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, and film rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio. A prequel, Hydra, was published in 2018 and became an international bestseller. Changeling, the third book in the series, was published in 2019 and was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. His fourth book, Beast, won the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Independent Voice Book of the Year award in 2020.
On The Shelf Reviews 