Author: Allie Therin
Genre: Fantasy, Magical Realism, Mystery
First published February 28, 2023
Book description (from GoodReads): A murder has Seattle on edge, and it falls to a pacifist empath—and a notorious empath hunter—to find the killer before it's too late
It’s the middle of the night when part-time police consultant and full-time empath Reece gets an anonymous call warning him that his detective sister needs his help. At an out-of-the-way Seattle marina, he discovers that three people have been butchered—including the author of the country’s strictest anti-empathy bill, which is just days from being passed into law.
Soon, Reece’s caller arrives: a shadowy government agent known as The Dead Man, who is rumored to deal exclusively in cases involving empathy. He immediately takes over the investigation, locking out both local PD and the FBI, but, strangely, keeps Reece by his side.
As the two track an ever-growing trail of violence and destruction across Seattle, Reece must navigate a scared and angry city, an irritating attraction to his mysterious agent companion, and a rising fear that perhaps empaths like him aren’t all flight and no fight after all
Review:
The idea started pretty interesting. The world is amazing- where technology is similar but not over the top, people are allowed to be in love with whoever they want, the freedom of not being shunned or prosecuted for it. Of course, as a great example of humankind, strong discrimination is turned against people who have different abilities.
In this world, there are people who have empathic abilities. In my mind, empaths have the ability to feel others' emotions and that was it. Here though some of the empaths have slightly different abilities- they can see lies and modify their emotions. The world-building is based on the fact that their abilities require physical contact. As part of a governmental ideal- someone is pushing fear against empaths, in order to protect society a law was passed; all empaths should wear gloves to stop them from controlling innocent bystanders through their mental manipulation.
The family relations here were amazing- The detective has a strong love to her baby brother. They are half-siblings but still both feel unmeasurable. They both feel a great responsibility to protect each other.
The good couple relationship in this whole story- Jamey and her not-so-secret boyfriend. It is clear that people have issues with Jamey be it as a detective or a girlfriend mainly due to her close relationship t a brother who is a known empath. But in this case, she gets a man who is willing to stand up for her, and her family and not back down even after getting political pressure to condemn empaths simply to make their department look good in the eyes of the people in power. He is an amazing example of a man, I'm totally cheering them on.
I see a lot of people who love this book, the world, the LGBT+ representation, the social criticism against discrimination, and cherry on top we have slow burn enemies to lovers (with star crossed lovers vibe). An empath and a witch hunter pretty much.
The bad thing was that the MC Reece is an idiot. He is immature, makes the stupidest decisions, is reckless, and selfish worse - he never seems to learn. I really could care less about him, he does not have any redeemable qualities - the sarcastic remarks, are juvenile and it comes off as rude and thoughtless.
The grey man storyline, he seems to be all-powerful, he has friends in high places- it makes him super annoying and aggravating. The idea that he has no feelings- did not work- it keeps getting pointed out, but he obviously does have an emotional response to things that keep happening and he has a clear interest in Reece. Why would he be into an idiot like Reece? Who knows.
The explanation for why he is immune to empaths was weak, it would have been better if he has something to block them than to say that he has no emotions, that plotline never made sense.
I am not going to be recommending this book too much. The good points do not make up for the whole negative aspects. The series is a definite DNF for me.
This was not for me.
This book I picked by chance, it was not meant for any of my challenges, but I was at work and was looking for an audiobook to pass the time. If this had been attempted in an ebook or a traditional book, I would have DNF-ed this. At least I gave it a chance.
Anyhow, the audiobook, the only way it could have been better was that it allowed me to change the playback speed- the top one is 2.0- this was so annoying that it would have been awesome to have moved it to 2.8 or 3 see if making it go faster made it less annoying.
This is in Anyplay, as long as you have the subscription at least I didn't spend money to read this book, I would not be buying a copy of this.
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