#BlogTour-‘Ghoster’ by Jason Arnopp

About the book…

‘The best cross-genre thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. Twisty, creepy and absolutely absorbing’ 
Sarah Pinborough

‘A helter-skelter collision of social media and the supernatural. Hugely enjoyable’ Chris Brookmyre

Kate Collins has been ghosted.

She was supposed to be moving in with her new boyfriend Scott, but all she finds after relocating to Brighton is an empty flat. Scott has vanished. His possessions have all disappeared.

Except for his mobile phone.

Kate knows she shouldn’t hack into Scott’s phone. She shouldn’t look at his Tinder, his calls, his social media. But she can’t quite help herself.

That’s when the trouble starts. Strange, whispering phone calls from numbers she doesn’t recognise. Scratch marks on the walls that she can’t explain.

And the growing feeling that she’s being watched . . .

Jason Arnopp – author of The Last Days of Jack Sparks, a Radio 2 Bookclub pick – returns with a razor-sharp thriller for a social-media obsessed world. Prepare to never look at your phone the same way again . . .

MASSIVE thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the blogotur inbite and Little Brown for my gifted review copy of ‘Ghoster’ by Jason Arnopp, due out on 24/10/19 in paperback format.

This book is whip smart evocation of the social media phenomena known as ‘FOMO‘ -or fear of missing out- and ‘‘ghosting’

What is so very smart is that you have a main character, Kate,-who incidentally is such a finely written female character from a male writer, I just want to applaud how well Jason Arnopp writes in the female voice!-whose job , as a paramdeic, is involved with individuals at their most vulnerable and life threatening.

Yet in her private life, she is using a date app to find Mr Right(or Mr He-Will-Do-For-Tonight) and her use of the refresh button has had catastrophic consequences. At a retreat for addicts to social media where people are weaned off their smart phone addictions, a man who she saw on Tinder has surprisingly appeared and a tentative relationship, conducted first in person and then over ancient Nokias (ask your grandparents if you don’t know what a Nokia is kids!)develops over the course of one summer.

Interspersed with details of their meeting, their dates and their moving in plans is the ‘now’ of Kate turning up in Brighton having heard absoolutely NOTHING from Scott for the previous couple of days.

Convinced it is some type of prank, she decides, having thrown her notice in at work and with her landlord, to still drive down with her movers behind her-imagine the shock, then, when she finds his entire flat empty, except for a drawing on a window and Scott’s discarded phone.

The only person she has to talk to about this, best friend Izzy, is miles away. Kate has no choice but to a)start her new job and b)work out just what the hell has happened.

But having worked so hard at withdrawing herself from her addiction, can she trust herself not to look in Scott’s phone?

Does she have any choice when she lives in an ancient flat with no electricity, no furniture and no clue?

The cleverness of this novel is emphaised by it’s dual nature-life and death, knowledge and lack thereof, addiction and cure are all interplayed effortlessly.

In order for Kate to work out just what the hell is going on, she has to confront an online footprint of the person she thought that she knew whilst maintaining a distance to protect her vulnerable mental state.

But if she had been online in the first place, would this situation have occurred?

And does validation come with a price tag that can cost you your sanity?

As Kate dives deeper, you feel that you as a reader are detecting along with her, searching for clues as to her boyfriend’s whereabouts, and as such, you want her to have a happy ending. But as weird things start happening and her sense of reality slips, there is a neat supernatural twist which throws an entirely new persepctive on the whole novel.

It takes a lot to grip me and make me read one book at a time-I admit to being a shameful and serial cheater with at least 2 books on the go-however, not only did this book completely thrill me, it made me look at my own social media usage, and question how much validity does a person need in their life? And in particular from those who are, essentially, strangers?

We all know that person who, in real life,resembles nothing like who they project online, and as they revel in this adoration for that fake self, does the real person inside become a ghost?

Do you actually ghost yourself whilst pretending to be something that you are not, becoming one step removed from real life as your energies are poured into searching for elusive terms like ‘top fan’,’influencer’ , ‘favourite’, most loved’, ‘Mr/Miss Right’?

How far before you disappear up your own online arse and vanish?

And again, I digress!

This book had me thinking so much about very many, many, MANY issues , it taps into uncomfortable truths and the consequences of lies and hidden agendas. On the surface it could be sold as many things , but to me, it read as a suspense filled narrative which we, the readers, are plunged head first into, again and again, like being ducked in a bucket of cold water, pulled back for air, and gasping, dunked again.

Breathless, exhilirating and weird as hell, I loved it, loved it, LOVED IT!

About the author…

Jason Arnopp is the author of the upcoming chiller-thriller novel ‘Ghoster’, ‘The Last Days Of Jack Sparks’ (Orbit Books) and the co-author of Inside Black Mirror with Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones.

Arnopp wrote the Lionsgate horror feature film Stormhouse, the New Line Cinema novel Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat, various official Doctor Who works of fiction (including the BBC audiobook Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion) and script-edited the 2012 Peter Mullan film The Man Inside.

Arnopp has also written 2012’s Beast In The Basement, a horror novella available at Amazon, and experimental ghost story A Sincere Warning About The Entity In Your Home.

He is the author of non-fiction ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else. He is on Twitter here, and is represented by literary agent Oli Munson at The AM Heath Agency. He is also represented for film and TV by Lawrence Mattis at Circle Of Confusion.

Check out the author’s YouTube channel here.

Links-http://www.jasonarnopp.com/

https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

https://www.jacksparks.co.uk/