Don't miss!

One of the best horror stories I've read in years! I look forward to reading more from this author. fantastic narration.

2 people found this helpful

A 21st Century devil

I really relished the idea of an update of The Exorcist for the 21st Century and the opening chapters of this book were genuinely scary and hugely promising. Unfortunately the tension more or less disappeared with the introduction of some fairly unbelievable comic book type characters and a plot that lost its way and never really got back on track. There was some good use of modern day social media, especially You Tube, and the egotistical character of Jack Sparks had a ring of authenticity, but this was let down by a confusing storyline and no real sense of what this book is all about. Overall I was disappointed, but it was an entertaining listen so not a complete waste of time.

4 people found this helpful

Started very well....

Started very well but the last was third pretty awful: a failure of imagination I suspect. The section where we have the repetition of me, me, me and I,I,I.... was painful...though well performed.

1 person found this helpful

Gripping, twisted social media horror story

When I heard that Jason Arnopp, a huge Doctor Who fan, had a debut novel out with a brilliantly timey wimey premise - this is after all the posthumously edited and annotated unfinished manuscript of a dead writer - I immediately looked it up and was not disappointed.

I'm not a horror reader either - I thought I was lucky when Jack's narration set out in a such a safe manner. I was well and truly engrossed by the story and Joe Jameson's outstanding narration by the time I found myself deep into a modern horror story. The book makes some abrupt pace and tone changes as it goes along, which I see from amazon.com reviews threw or confused some readers, but guided by Joe, it all flowed well, albeit with with a sinking inevitability, for me.

Setting a horror story into the modern social media age was clever and made me laugh a lot - but also wince 'guilty!' a few too many times as well.

Arnopp makes excellent and disconcerting use of the multiple perspectives through which Jack's last days are told, and if I ever run into him in a pub one day, I will be armed with questions - the most important of which, of course, cannot be answered by the writer as this is a story that demands some work on the part of the reader.

Recommended listen.

2 people found this helpful

Excellent!

I need to be clear. Although the author and I were both freelancers on the same music magazine and our time there over-lapped I don't believe we ever met, sadly. So although it could be said that this fact has coloured my review, it really hasn't. We were barely colleagues much less personal friends.

All that said, this is an excellent novel; it's humorous, it's dark and it's often truly chilling.

The main character is a self-assured, egotistical, and very self-centered journalist who rings absolutely true from my own experiences - so much so that I was often left wondering who amongst our colleagues the author based him upon.

Our hero/anti-hero attends an exorcism in Italy arrogantly trying to prove what a sham the whole thing is and matters rapidly, entertainingly and disastrously spiral out of his control immediately afterwards.

The narration is superb, the story equally so.

Top marks.

Worst book I’ve ever read!

Don’t waste your time! Awful! Utter rubbish! I’m deleting it now! Only read it for a book club.

The last days of jack sparks

thoroughly enjoyed this - had to get to the end and a very good ending it was

meh

was ok. I wasn't enthralled by it at all. it just seemed to be missing something and I can't put my finger on what it was.

Odd

Not the sort of thing I have read before unsure if it was a tongue in cheek story line or real still puzzled

Generic and boring.

The narration was okay but the story was really rather dull. If you're young and new to the horror genre then the social media elements might float your boat but I just wanted to stop listening after a couple of hours. It was obvious where it was going and has been done so much better elsewhere.