Title: I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Author: Iain Reid
Date finished: 6/21/16
Genre: Fiction, suspense, horror
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
Publication Date: June 14, 2016
Pages in book: 224
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE:I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.
Blurb from the cover:
I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.
Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”
And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.
In this smart, suspenseful, and intense literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.
My rating: 2.5 stars out of a scale of 5
My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. Also, this book will count towards my Book Riot 2016 Read Harder reading challenge, marking off the “read a horror book” box since I think this book was pretty horror-ific. I spent a lot of time thinking to myself “don’t go into that abandoned (blank)!” which I feel like is how people normally react during regular horror movies. This book is interesting because we are not formally introduced to our narrator for the first few chapters, I think we learn more about who the narrator is at the end but I don’t know if I quite understand what happened at the end. Anyway, the book starts out with a girl going home with her boyfriend Jake to meet his parents. They have some conversations about philosophy and psychology on the way there, and we as the reader learn about the beginning of their relationship and that the girl is getting mysterious phone calls from her own phone number with cryptic voice mails. The girlfriend is also thinking about ending things with Jake. So once they get to Jake’s parents’ house, Jake starts acting really weird and his parents are especially odd. The tension starts to really build here and the reader starts to become concerned for this poor girl who will be caught unawares and who knows what will happen.
Overall I did enjoy this book somewhat up until the ending. The last chapter was confusing for me to say the least. I didn’t really understand what happened. I think it was just a “my brain didn’t follow what happened there” sort of thing though since other people who left reviews for the book on Amazon seemed to understand what transpired at the end. There was also just a lot of dialogue, which I’m sure was necessary for this particular story line but wasn’t something I normally enjoy in a book. So overall this one wasn’t a hit for me but there were things I liked about it. The author did a great job of building tension and really making the reader feel almost frightened. I kept looking over my shoulder and I was afraid to turn the lights off! Even though this book wasn’t one of my favorites, I would still recommend trying it. It is a short and fairly quick read and hopefully you’ll understand the ending better than me!
The bottom line: This was a confusing book for me, I still don’t really understand how the book ended. I think its worth a try, maybe someone can figure out what happened and explain it to me.
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page
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