In a near future a teenager, overwhelmed with the knowledge that her mother is terminally ill, chooses to become a part of the latest social media craze – Heartstream – a method of sharing your feelings with others. While wearing the ‘patches’, people can connect to any stream – a playboy partying, a thrill seeker on a theme park tour – and feel what that person is feeling. In the case of Amy, those who stream from her feel her fear, panic and even numbness as she tries to keep moving day after day, knowing her mother is dying in the next room. On the day of Amy’s mother’s funeral, Amy returns home to find a stranger making herself comfortable in her kitchen. What follows is a thrilling twenty or so hours of a hostage situation, during which Amy’s world is turned upside down.
Where to even start? I listened to this book, and it was read by two excellent narrators; one for Cat’s chapters, and one for Amy. It was a long time before I put two and two together, which was nice. I’m not a fan of books where you can see the outcome from the start. This book surprised me in many ways. I wasn’t expecting it to deal with grief as well as it did; the author did a great job of portraying the different emotions of grief, the different stages, and how different people cope in different ways. Amy used Heartstream as a way of distancing herself from her feelings while also, possibly unconsciously, processing them herself. Our other narrator, Cat, is a teenager in the thick of a pop-culture phenomenon surrounding a boyband. The fandom thinks two of the group are a secret couple, and go to extreme lengths to disprove any information that shows otherwise. Cat is deep inside the fandom-come-cult with her best friend and computer (evil) genius, Evie. But what Evie doesn’t know is that the band members are NOT together, and in fact, Cat herself is secretly dating one of them, while also feeding the fandom, trying to keep her relationship a secret. But when Cat becomes pregnant, her hidden secret may soon be revealed, bringing down the wrath of the fandom. I did have a few issues with the story, mostly the portrayal of suicidal thinking being stopped by guilt as to what the rest of the family would think. There were also scenes set in a psychiatric hospital that were raw and painful to read, but not necessarily a damaging or incorrect portrayal of the system itself. Content Warnings: Discussions of sex, birth, gas lighting, violence, death, terminal cancer. If you liked: Black Mirror – You might like this! Rating: ****
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